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This Gartner report seems to tell a very different story than Intel's announcement that Q3 revenue would $700 million better than expected. To quote Intel's press release:

The increase in revenue is primarily driven by replenishment of PC supply chain inventory. The company is also seeing some signs of improving PC demand.

Intel can get in big legal trouble with the SEC for lying on these type of financial announcements, so I tend to give a little more cred to regulated stuff like this than just some random analyst.

It's cute you think share price controls executive salary, instead of, you know, contracts

God you're confident in your ignorance. But you're not right. Executive compensation (I didn't say "salary", I said "what they get paid") normally varies with performance, and often it's quite public how this works. Look at Intel's arrangement, as an example:

http://www.intc.com/intelProxy...

The other obvious way executives' compensation varies with performance is, as you mention, stock options. Stock options are obviously worth more as share prices go up (and are often, indeed, worth nothing at all unless share prices go up).

You probably think executives are paid too much or something. So do I. But if you can't see something as banal, obvious, and easily verifiable as "share prices control what executives get paid", I just don't know what to say. This isn't like some kind of gray area or something that's hard to grasp, and I can't imagine under what grounds a rational person would dispute that it's true. It's just reality; many, if not most executives will make a lot more money if share prices go up.

I see two possibilities here. You realize I'm right, and maybe that will open some crack of light into your mind that maybe you don't understand things as well as you think you do, that maybe you're not working very hard on comprehension, and you just don't bother to reply. Or, you double down on stupidity and anger and pathetic attempts at condescension and write a really, fantastically stupid response.

I'm betting on the latter. Either way, I'm done. Bye.

The article is on face value self admitted FUD. If, maybe, possibly. Due to the lack of hard facts, the article is raising concerns of what might be happening.

Has anyone tried to use one of the phones hands on? I had the oppertunity to try one of the earlier Intel phones, but not the new one, so I don't have a comparison between the older Intel phone and the newer one. A benchmark between the new and older model would be interesting. I know how the older Intel phone works. It worked very well. The only issue of concern with the older phone was the limitations on the radio. Since Intel purchased the portfloio from Motorolla, I expect the big improvements will be in the radio technology. With SOC designs, benchmarking end user app space is tricky at best as software modem, graphics, etc are all sharing processor cycles.

Overall, I really liked the Intel Phone.

The big expected performance gains are in battery life as much physical hardware is replaced with software on a processor that has the headroom to do the processing on less power.

Refrence Intel buys Motorola Mobility http://www.intc.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=638502

At least Intel spends about 25% of its revenue on R&D. That kind of justifies the 70% margins. Actually, Intel shows 58% gross margins in Q2 2012, but that is still really high. http://www.intc.com/financials.cfm

There is demand for full speed desktop chips with multi cores, sipping low power. Watch demand expand the offerings. Even in a sluggish economy, Intel has figured out that higher performance at lower cost drives sales.

Revenue in 2002 26.8 Revenue in 2011 54.0 Billion
http://www.intc.com/images/highlights/graph_intro_1.jpg

Cable hasn't figured how to penetrate the market with the best bang for the buck so their market share is erroding.

If you take a Mac and Price spec for Spec (Every spec even if you don't think it is a big deal such as glowing keyboard with light sensor or weight and thinness) You will find that the Price of the Mac is the same as any other new Commercially built system out there of the same quality.

For the very low-end models, maybe, but when you look at the price of the higher models and upgrades -- literally comparing Apples to Apples -- it's readily apparent that their prices are way off, and egregiously so.

Let's compare two "base" iMacs, the only noted difference being the processor and HD:
21.5" Core i5 2.5GHz & 500GB -> 21.5" Core i5 2.7GHz & 1TB [$300 difference]
Core i5-2400S 2.5GHz $184 & Seagate Barracuda 500GB $84 (Total: $268) -> Core i5-2500S 2.7GHz $205 & Segate 1 Barracuda TB $109 (Total: $314)
Actual Difference: $46 Apple's Markup: 552%
Sources: Intel's price list 500GB @ NewEgg 1TB @ NewEgg

Component upgrades for the second iMac:
2.7GHz Core i5 -> 2.8GHz Core i7 [Add $200.00]
Core i5-2500S 2.7GHz $205 -> Core i7-2600S $294 Actual Difference: $89 Apple's Markup: 125%
Source: Same as above

4GB -> 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB [Add $200.00]
4GB 1333MHz DDR3 $25 x2 = $50. Actual Difference: $25 Apple's Markup: 700%
Source: The most expensive laptop 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM @ NewEgg

4GB -> 16GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x4GB [Add $600.00]
4GB 1333MHz DDR3 $25 x4 = $100. Actual Difference: $75 Apple's Markup: 700%
Source: Same as above.

1TB -> 2TB 7200RPM Serial ATA Drive [Add $150.00]
Seagate Barracuda 1TB $109 -> Seagate 2TB $130 Actual Difference: $11 Apple's Markup: 1263%
Source: 1TB @ NewEgg 2TB @ NewEgg

And then there's the whole issue of using mobile components in a desktop. Why would they do that? Not to provide value -- mobile components are generally more expensive and lower performing then their desktop components -- but to cram them into a retarded form factor. Sorry, Apple's tax is alive and well, and it's insulting to an informed consumer. You can throw together a *better* system for well less than what Apple charges for its iMac and as a bonus, you don't have to buy a new your monitor when you upgrade your entire system. And for $28 and a little pre-planning, you can even throw Lion on it or run it in a VM. Yes, you have to learn or know how to do it, but as they say, ignorance can be expensive.

Intel. Between 28% and 31% typically. http://www.intc.com/intelAR2008/financial/statements/note23/index.html

I'm not even going to put a foot in the flamefest over whether solid state mass storage is cost effective or even reliable - I only ask you don't call some chips that just sit there a spinning disk.
 
More than 1/4 of Intel's revenue comes from miscellaney chips and motherboards that are not microprocessors. That's a big enough chunk it shouldn't be dismissed as not a core business.
 
That this bug made it through means someone should be looking for employment and indicates a problem with management and internal processes, not that they shouldn't make the product in the first place.

Although the nominal corporate tax rate is not that low, the actual (average) taxes paid by corporations is quite low compared to other developed countries because of the convoluted tax breaks written into the law.

Citation please. I'd like to see an example of a US company legally pay less than 20% on income of at least 10 million in profits.

I'll use Intel as an example, since they post excellent reports and are a large multinational corporation. http://www.intc.com/intelAR2008/financial/statements/note23/index.html Notice their effective rate of between 28% and 31%(make sure to read about the 24%). Amazing that the government gives them tax credits to do R&D and manufacturing locally. You'd think that they'd just lower the tax rate.

Is that low compared to other nations? This data says no: http://www.kpmg.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/Corporate-and-Indirect-Tax-Rate-Survey-2008v2.pdf The average rate in 2008 is 25.9%. In fact Intel's effective rate is higher than over 70% of other nations including the entire EU which has been lowering corporate taxes over the past decade.

There is more information from the (non-slashdotted) Intel site. The thing at the side of the monitor is indeed a CD player (CD writer, even).

For comparison, look at the Concept PC 2000 (also known as "deep forest") from HP and Intel sites. Both designs feature a small case. The most advanced feature of the 2000 design is that the side of the case has a translucent panel so that you can use the PC as a picture frame (for those who don't have enough room for their pr0n). But the lack of PCI slots seems like a pretty big limitation (if USB were faster and had more peripherals, maybe that wouldn't be such a big deal and I suppose for many uses it still isn't a big deal, but I'm not sure I'm quite willing to consign PCI to the "legacy" category yet).

Here's the URL spelled out in full to get past the $&#$(! filter: http://www.intc.com/pressroom/archive/releases/dp1 02599.htm

I'm no fan of Intel, but Tom's accusations seem like a stretch to me.

In 1999, Intel made $29-Billion in revenue. It doesn't seem reasonable that Intel would gamble such a large part of it's reputation on a shoddy product get a piddly $158 Million dollars (Well, I guess that's piddly). They probably spend more then that on advertising and marketing in 1999.