Intel's Expensive Disco Ball

Re-Pawn writes "From the NY Times: The Disco Ball of Failed Hopes and Other Tales From Inside Intel (Registration Required.) Seems like Intel is losing market share to other chip makers - this article highlights a few problems that Intel has had including one very expensive disco ball made from a failed attempt to produce projection televisions."

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Registration Not Required

[Anonymous Coward]

over at CNET, as I'm sure it is not required at many other sites.

What's with the /. addiction to NYT?

Article text

[Spy der Mann]

(Courtesy of bugmenot.com ;-) )

One sign that Intel is having trouble dancing to technology's current beat may be the world's most expensive disco ball.

For a company holiday party next month, a handful of engineers assembled a disco ball - with hundreds of small reflective devices - to hang above the dance floor. The mirrors are leftover projection-television chips from Intel's planned effort to enter the digital television market - an effort the company recently abandoned only 10 months after a splashy introduction at the Consumer Electronics Show last January.

The TV effort became yet another in a series of embarrassing stumbles for Intel. The company has publicly canceled a succession of high-profile projects, has replaced managers in money-losing ventures and has fallen behind its keen competitor Advanced Micro Devices in introducing technologies, like a feature that wards off viruses and worms, in markets that Intel has long dominated.

A.M.D. has been so successful in stealing the spotlight from Intel lately that Kevin B. Rollins, the president of one of Intel's biggest customers, Dell Computer, said at a financial conference call this month that Dell was considering adding computers with A.M.D. chips to its product line.

For two decades, Intel has been the most sure-footed of Silicon Valley companies. But lately, it seems to have lost its way. "They have made many wrong decisions and now it's time for soul-searching and structural, not cosmetic, changes," said Ashok Kumar, a financial analyst at Raymond James & Associates.

This all portends an interesting inauguration for Intel's 50-year-old president, Paul S. Otellini, the longtime Intel marketing executive tapped by the board this month to become only the fourth chief executive in the company's history.

Mr. Otellini does not officially take the job until May. But next week in one of his first official acts as the designated chief executive, he plans to present his strategy to Wall Street analysts. He may have a lot to answer for, including the 25 percent decline in Intel's stock price this year.

Mr. Otellini will tell analysts that he plans to focus on four areas for growth: international markets for desktop personal computers, mobile and wireless applications, the digital home, as well as a new initiative aimed at large corporate computing markets that Intel is calling the Digital Office.

The strategy is a significant shift - a "right-hand turn," as Mr. Otellini likes to say - from Intel's long-term obsession with making ever-faster computer chips. Instead, the company is now concentrating on what he calls platforms: complete systems aimed at both computing and consumer electronics markets.

Mr. Otellini insists that the recent missteps, including the premature introduction he himself made of the digital project, are simply a result of over-optimistic marketing.

"What was wrong was that I made the decision to go public on it at the Consumer Electronics Show," he said in a recent interview in Intel's Santa Clara headquarters. "Error of judgment. Mea culpa. I learned a lesson."

The decision to preannounce an unproven technology was an uncharacteristic one for Intel, said G. Dan Hutcheson, president of VLSI Research Inc., and a longtime observer of the company. However, he said, it has been Mr. Otellini's ascendancy at the company that has changed the way it markets technology.

"As he came into power Intel tried to become a more aggressive marketing company," he said. "They never seemingly made mistakes before and that was simply because they didn't preannounce. This is the classic failure of a company where the marketing guys are pushing the manufacturing guys more than what's there."

Intel is still a technology giant, the global leader in semiconductors, with revenue last year of more than $30 billion. The company retains an unrivaled manufacturing capacity, control of a powerful desktop computing standard, and an enviable internat

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Re:come on

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

"It applies to any laptop that has a Pentium M AND an intel wireless chip."

AND the Intel 855 chipset.

It's brilliant, actually. Intel has never advertised "Pentium-M", so people ask for a "Centrino" notebook. Because "Centrino" only applies when resellers use their wireless chip and chipset in addition to the Pentium-M, Intel effectively locks their resellers into selling Intel components when they might otherwise have not.

Not that the Intel PRO/Wireless 2200 and 855 chipset are bad. I'm thoroughly impressed with the trio.