Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight • Hacker News Board

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#161

Post by Spooky23 » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 9:38 PM UTC

ranci wrote: post #137

TallGuyShort wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the growth in trends such as ARM for mobile devices and dynamic resource allocation on the cloud, I still don't think you can make that broad a statement.

Can you make the statement that the economy had nothing to do with it? A business' success or failure is reliant on the economy on a fundamental level. I imagine if college graduates weren't struggling to find jobs and pay off their massive student debts they would have sold more computers, despite the trends working against them.

Because it isn't relevant. This is the impact of moving to the cloud. Those broke and indebted college kids are buying $800 iPhones instead of $800 PCs, because they don't need the hassle.

I'm a power user. I have a 4 year old MacBook and a 2 core * 4GB VDI session. I won't replace the MacBook for another 18 months.

Even in enterprise IT... Every project we did in 2004/2005 required a server purchase with two Xeon sockets and a NIC that might be Intel.

Now the average marginal unit of virtual server needs 1/50 of an Intel Xeon. And a lot of those Xeons are at AWS, which squeezes the margins.

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#162

Post by MrFoof » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 9:40 PM UTC

spriggan3 wrote: post #79

dntrkv wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bet is on falling PC sales. I'm surprised this didn't happen earlier, to be honest. PC sales by year: http://i.imgur.com/IxSo1oy.png

Does this include laptops ?

Yes. Around 60% of "personal computers" (excluding tablets) sold are laptops.

What's interesting is tablets. The number of tablets sold basically equals the number of desktop and laptops sold combined.

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#163

Post by mixedbit » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 9:40 PM UTC

What Intel needs is some reason for people to do compute intensive tasks on their computers. Today games are probably the only popular type of app that requires abundant CPU power, for most other popular activities CPU usage is low which doesn't motivate to upgrade hardware. Maybe VR can change this?

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#164

Post by jhulla » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 9:41 PM UTC

pjlegato wrote: post #140

jhulla wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be pedantic: the market is perfectly valued at every moment. Of course market prices will change, sometimes very quickly. BTW, this is a great site for tracking S&P ratios: http://www.multpl.com/

The efficient market hypothesis (the idea that the market is by definition perfectly valued at every moment) is highly controversial, and actively rejected by many finance and economics experts of all political views.

My point is simply a tautology: the price is the price. Now the price may change, someone may have their thumb on the scale, there may be shill bidders driving sentiment, etc. But at the moment you get a bid/ask spread, that is what you get.

Practically speaking, I personally don't believe the efficient market hypothesis due to the very obvious meddling by political actors, central banks, national treasuries, etc. Behavioral finance has also consistently demonstrated that humans do not react rationally in markets.

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#165

Post by fokov » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 9:41 PM UTC

osweiller wrote: post #119

ranci wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they can't sell computers in the digital age where software has taken over everything, you can think whatever you want but that does reflect poorly on the economy. Yes, many factors are at play. It is still a terrible sign.

More computers are being sold than ever before. The market is absolutely saturated with computing devices. And aside from the intense competition Intel is facing, they're suffering the same issue that the GPU makers face -- I once upgraded yearly because the gains made it worthwhile. Now I upgrade pretty much only when something fails. It is absolutely picking a narrative.

Anecdote, I was an avid gamer that would upgrade whenever the price/performance was good enough for my budget. However, I bought almost top tier stuff back in 2008 and haven't upgraded the core of my system since. I don't game like I used to, but it still does everything I need it to do. I used to do yearly-ish new builds as well.

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#166

Post by zachberger » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 9:42 PM UTC

shostack wrote: post #159

wolf_cook wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From CNBC: "The technology company also said the chief financial officer Stacy Smith would leave that role to lead sales."

Hmmm...CFO heading up sales is not something you see every day... Anyone have any further context around this?

Listening to the earnings call now.. Stacy wants to learn more about the other parts of the business and BK wants to show off his leadership skills to other parts of the company

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#167

Post by coddingtonbear » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 9:43 PM UTC

irl_zebra wrote: post #112

logfromblammo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Closer to nonation, technically, but decimation is the word everyone already knows.

non is 9, deci is 10, the workforce was reduced by 11. How on earth is 11 closer to 9 than 10? Or were you just trying to sound smart?

I think if you reformat that percentage as a fraction, you'll understand what he's going for.

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#168

Post by manav » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 9:46 PM UTC

While there are obvious market valuation issues at play, I think this signals more about Intel and it's future strategy. The layoffs come shortly after their $16.7 billion acquisition of Altera was completed.

Intel really missed out on mobile and with PC sales rapidly declining it looks like they are going to refocus on enterprise and data centers. ARM and NVIDIA/GPU computing are also expanding rapidly in those areas and that will pose a major threat to Intel.

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#169

Post by atmosx » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 9:46 PM UTC

spriggan3 wrote: post #64

atmosx wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that this is the result of the wider economic turmoil we're experiencing since 2008. The US economy, in theory, is recovering but the biggest player worldwide is Europe and Europe right now can't handle a few hundred thousand immigrants - should be trivial given the available resources. Europe has political midgets in a time when at least mediocre politicians would be needed all over the place (France, German…

> So I think it's mainly EUs fault Yeah right, let's blame Europe for yet another US bubble. The last 2 crisis were entirely US made.

To be honest, the EU debt crisis is 100% self inflicted. In a try to unify the European countries around a set of rules (Maastricht treaty) Germany is destroying the EU while France is watching.

The EU is in no position to point fingers. Even the lame QE issued by ECB - a little too late - was so heavily contested by the Bundesbank, it's hilarious. The country that profited the most by boosting it's exports, is killing the whole project just because the other countries didn't abide to some rules written on paper 10 years ago.

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#170

Post by detaro » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 9:47 PM UTC

lotyrin wrote: post #154

emp_zealoth wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There are too many layers at Intel, and that leaves too many of those layers too well insulated, able to believe it was the brand that won them their markets (not the economics: Wintel monopoly in personal computing history, having the best server and laptop parts currently), and that despite the economics of new products and "solutions", the brand will somehow convince people to buy in. Well, as a gamer, intel (and…

Exactly, even if gamers were a big market, they follow the ROI too. Intel can't try to be a brand the way Nike is or the way LV is, they sell technical things to technical people but mostly to industry.

> Intel can't try to be a brand the way Nike is or the way LV is

They have a surprising amount of advertising at gaming events which seemingly tries to do exactly that. Even though they are more-or-less the only option. (although AMD was (maybe still is? I'm not following that to closely) better at integrated graphics solutions which were interesting for low-end gaming, most gaming profit is probably near the high-end)

Maybe to promote PC gaming in general, over other activities and specifically consoles?