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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."
Intel is going to have a few rocky years ahead of them. They rested on their laurels and didn't take the competition seriously. They also threw a lot of money at useless projects and tried to shoehorn x86 into every possible market rather than trying to build the best product for that market.
They need a CEO that will put an end to the idiocy and refocus Intel, but no one wants to be the one that has to go out back and shoot Old Yeller. Hopefully they do find someone, because as much fun as it is to see Intel eat some humble pie, if they don't get their shit together AMD will eventually turn out the same and we'll just be back to a stagnant computer market.
They'll hire someone who is already a CEO, regardless of how badly they've screwed up their previous companies.
If you think manufacturing is the cornerstone of Intel's dominance, then you haven't been paying attention.
Manufacturing absolutely has been the cornerstone of Intel's dominance for a long time. The main reason AMD could not compete with Intel on CPUs was because Intel had an absolute cost advantage because of their manufacturing. The only reason Intel didn't put AMD out of business a long time ago was because of anti-trust concerns. For a long time they could sell their x86 CPUs for less money than AMD's cost while still making a profit. Intel didn't get to be the biggest chip maker in the world by accident or clever ads.
MARKETING the "Intel" brand (slapped onto almost every PC for a while) and the "duh duh duh dun" sound is the cornerstone of Intel's dominance.
Sigh... You are hugely overestimating the power of marketing. This is utter nonsense. Intel's primary customers are definitively NOT end users. Apple, HP, Acer, Asus, Samsung, etc are the ones buying the majority of their CPUs and they aren't going to be impressed by their TV ads. What you are talking about is the branded ingredient strategy Intel rolled out years ago.
Once the masses realize(d) that you could get the same or similar chips from other places, cheaper, and without giving up much (if any) performance, Intel was in trouble.
The masses aren't the ones buying Intel's products and it's only been fairly recently that competitors could compete with Intel on cost when it comes to chip manufacturing. The problem Intel has right now is that other chip makers have caught up on cost and chip tech and their cash cow (the PC market) has been surpassed by the mobile market where they don't have very good product offerings. Intel is still hugely profitable but their growth prospects are constrained by their absence and problems in mobile. Has NOTHING to do with marketing and everything to do with product design and manufacturing prowess of competitors. Intel's biggest threat is not AMD in the PC space. Intel's biggest threats are ARM, Qualcom, and Taiwanese chip fabs. The mobile market is where the growth is and Intel doesn't dominate there.
Have they climbed the highest mountains?
Have they run through the fields?
Have they scaled these city walls? (These city walls!)
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I guarantee I could fuck them into irrelevance in 6 months for the right golden parachute. Although I do understand Marisa Mayer is on the market too if they need to pander to the diversity crowd.