Tim Cook’s strategy to disengage from Samsung as a supplier of LCDs, memory and processors while simultaneously creating a worldwide supply chain from the remnants of former leaders like Sharp, Elpida, Toshiba and soon Intel is remarkable in its scope and breadth. By 2014, Apple should have in place a supply chain for 500M iOS devices… Read More
Intel’s ability this week to raise $6B in debt at rock bottom interest rates should give one a moment to pause and consider what this portends for the future of the company and whether it remains in public hands. We live in extraordinary times where a fiscally excessive government can sell 10 year treasuries at 1.6% and the largest … Read More
Intel may not know it but they are entering a crises moment due to the announced resignation of Paul Otellini that will not take place until May 2013. A six-month funeral with a 100,000 mourning employees will not calm customers who question whether to stick with the x86 PC roadmap much less the Atom mobile processors. A more dramatic… Read More
The announcement that Paul Otellini will step down in May 2013 is extraordinary in the history of the way Intel makes CEO transitions. They are thoughtful, deliberate and years in the making, unlike today’s announcement. Twenty years ago Otellini and Andy Bryant were in the top echelon of Andy Grove’s executive team and … Read More
September WSTS data shows the 3Q 2012 semiconductor market increased 1.8% from 2Q 2012. The year 2012 semiconductor market will certainly show a decline. 4Q 2012 would need to grow 11% to result in positive growth for 2012. The outlook for key semiconductor companies points to a 4Q 2012 roughly flat with 3Q 2012. The table below shows… Read More
I attended the Jasper User Group this week, at least the keynotes, the first by Kathryn Kranen the CEO of Jasper and the second by Bob Bentley of Intel.
Kathryn went over some history, going back to when the company was started (under the name Tempus Fugit) back in August 2002 with a single product for protocol verification. Now, since… Read More
At CES 2011, Steven Sinofsky of Microsoft stepped on the stage and went off the map of proven Windows territory. Announcing the next version of Windows would support the ARM Architecture, including SoCs from Qualcomm, NVIDIA, and TI, set a new course for Microsoft.
But Windows, being the battleship-sized behemoth that it is, would… Read More
Intel announced its quarterly results a couple of days ago. They had previously downgraded 3rd quarter sales estimates but they managed to beat the downgraded numbers. If you look at the transcript of the call (I didn’t listen live) you’ll see very little mention of mobile and Atom. This is bad news for Intel. Its core… Read More
A small blurb last week announced that Apple had hired Jim Mergard away from Samsung after just 15 months on the job. Previously to that he was a 16-year AMD veteran who headed up their low power x86 Brazos processor team. In near synchronicity, AMD hired Famed Apple Designer Jim Keller to be its chief microprocessor architect. When… Read More
A year ago, Meg Whitman decided it was time to venture back into the business world by grabbing onto the HP CEO baton from a badly wounded Leo Apotheker. What for? My best guess is to enter the Pantheon of Great Turnaround CEOs of failing companies, best exemplified by the work of Lou Gerstner with IBM in the early 1990s. It comes too late… Read More
