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In CEO Search, Intel Still Hasn't Found What It's Looking For (bloomberg.com)
Intel has been trying to fill the most prominent role in the $400-billion chip industry for more than six months. The company's board still hasn't found what it's looking for. From a report: Intel directors have ruled out some candidates for the vacant chief executive officer post, passed up obvious ones, been rejected by some and decided to go back and re-interview others, extending the search, according to people familiar with the process. Chairman Andy Bryant told some employees recently that the chipmaker may go with a "non-traditional" candidate, suggesting a CEO from outside the company is a possibility.
Whoever is chosen will take the reins at a company that's churning out record results, but is facing rising competition. The new CEO will have to convince investors that Intel's loss of manufacturing leadership -- a cornerstone of its dominance -- won't cost it market share in the lucrative semiconductor market. He or she will also have to deliver on the company's promise to maintain growth by winning orders beyond personal computer and server chips. "The new CEO will have many difficult decisions to make in a short amount of time," said Kevin Cassidy, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co. "The company can perform well in the near term due to good demand for PC and servers, but longer-term decisions and strategy need a CEO soon."
Whoever is chosen will take the reins at a company that's churning out record results, but is facing rising competition. The new CEO will have to convince investors that Intel's loss of manufacturing leadership -- a cornerstone of its dominance -- won't cost it market share in the lucrative semiconductor market. He or she will also have to deliver on the company's promise to maintain growth by winning orders beyond personal computer and server chips. "The new CEO will have many difficult decisions to make in a short amount of time," said Kevin Cassidy, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co. "The company can perform well in the near term due to good demand for PC and servers, but longer-term decisions and strategy need a CEO soon."
I completely disagree with you, and your post proves the point.
Disagree all you want but that doesn't make me wrong. Personal anecdotes about your family are not persuasive. I've done the research on this. Intel for a long time had a huge cost advantage in their manufacturing. You don't have to take my word for it. The data is out there for you to look up - I didn't just pull this out of my ass. Harvard has done case studies about this for business schools.
10 years ago my parents wouldn't buy a computer at all unless it had Intel Inside on it, because they trusted Intel made the best chips.
So what? It wasn't like they had any alternatives in the PC space 10 years ago. AMD wasn't exactly hitting it out of the park and there was no option #3 in the PC space. Saying you wanted an Intel CPU in your PC was like saying you wanted a Microsoft operating system. There wasn't much else for most people to really chose from. Furthermore your parents almost certainly DID buy a computer without Intel Inside because I'm betting they owned a mobile phone which is just another type of computer. If Intel's CPU offerings had been worse than AMDs consistently or if AMD had a cost advantage then Intel would have lose market share and no amount of clever marketing would have convinced Apple or HP or the rest to stick with them.
The Intel Inside ad campaign made some marginal differences for Intel but it was not EVER the basis of their market dominance. Intel started that ad campaign in the early 1990s. I remember when it started. They were already the dominant player in CPUs long before the ad campaign started. Seriously, you don't have to take my word for it. Go back and pull their old financial statements and look at market analysis of the day. Intel dominated the PC CPU market because of their cost advantages in manufacturing. Without that Intel would have lost a long time ago.