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

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

#311
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goldman's stock price is approximately 25% off it's 12 month high. [0] Morgan Stanley is approximately 35% off. [1] Seems like the market is properly taking in their bad news. Some parts of the market do fine, others get hit. And yes, some might be over-valued. When interest rates are low, the future cash flows of companies are discounted back at a lower rate. So if all things are equal (which they never really are,…

Both GS and MS (as well as other FIs) are off there highs because of all the volatility in the markets the past 6 months and worries about losses from bad energy loans. BAC, WF, Citi are all off their 12-month highs by a significant margin despite doing relatively well in Q1. Also, this has nothing to do with discounting the cash flows, it's mostly stock buybacks that's driving all the action: http://www.bloomberg.co…

You talk as if sophisticated investors can't read a balance sheet or don't understand buybacks.

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

#312
post #195
post #39

So Intel is cutting 11% of its workforce, Goldman Sachs just reported a 56% drop in profits, Morgan Stanley had a 50% drop in profits, Netflix missed subscriber growth estimates etc... yet, the Dow just hit a 9-Month high, and the S&P500 is now above 2100. The whole market is overvalued, not just the tech unicorns.

Asset inflation caused by FED flooding the banks with cheap $.

That's what happens when you add more money to the system. It flows to highly liquid assets first.

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

#313
post #92

Am I the only one with a sinking, gut instinct, that this is indicative of a deeper problem in the economy? It feels like a crash is lurking... Maybe I'm just paranoid?

interest at zero means that you are stepping on the gas pedal and the car is hardly moving, so of curse a crash is coming, a big one

It's been like that since the last crash.

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

#314
post #138

I'm not sure how much of an effect this would have, but from a consumer's point of view, there isn't as much of a reason to buy a new PC every few years anymore. The laptop I'm using right now was purchased in 2011, and the prices in stores now are very comparable to what I paid back then. I've made up my mind to buy a new one a few times, but then when I go to the store, it just isn't worth it.

Moore's law may become irrelevant long before it becomes invalid. Without rapid increases in usable computing power, the reasons for upgrading have largely disappeared. In particular the chips at the top of the profit margin curve, where Intel loves to play, are much less compelling. Intel might eventually find itself in the same shoes Kodak did - when your primary business dries up, there's unlikely to be a follow-o…

> Without rapid increases in usable computing power, the reasons for upgrading have largely disappeared.

1. Force Windows 10 upgrade.

2. Windows 10 sucks on this computer!

3. Buy Windows 10 compatible computer.

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

#315
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The whole market is overvalued, not just the tech unicorns. Who is it overvalued by, and how is the "true" value determined?

Suppose the market just tracks widget factories. Every factory produces the same quality widgets, all shipping is flat-rate by distance and there are no tariffs or taxes. In this market, it's easy to determine market value of any particular widget factory: market share of world-wide production. Suppose everyone expects the demand for widgets to grow by 1% per year for the next 10 years. This growth might get priced i…

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

#316
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The whole market is overvalued, not just the tech unicorns. Who is it overvalued by, and how is the "true" value determined?

Suppose the market just tracks widget factories. Every factory produces the same quality widgets, all shipping is flat-rate by distance and there are no tariffs or taxes. In this market, it's easy to determine market value of any particular widget factory: market share of world-wide production. Suppose everyone expects the demand for widgets to grow by 1% per year for the next 10 years. This growth might get priced i…

It wasn't really over valuing the price widgets.

Valuation only includes all available information.

You can't expect random acts of God to be priced in.

Overvalution is when psychology everyone is bullish, but the facts are not backing that up.

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

#317
post #72
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only person for whom the answer to this question is "almost none?" I'm serious: about 80% of my day is meeting with real people in the real world. Mobile phones haven't changed that. The other 20% of my day is sitting at my desk creating original work product (mathematical models and thoughtful memoranda) or reviewing the work product of others. Mobile phones haven't changed that, either. No doubt the drough…

Yeah, mobile hasn't figured out a good way to take over the workspace. Some of the tablet/laptop hybrids are getting closer. As for entertainment though, are you watching Youtube extensively on your desktop?

I know this sounds crazy, but there are still some people who have cable subscriptions and watch TV on a TV. Oh the horror!

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

#318
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 You'd be surprised -- they already are. Their original "Intel Inside" campaign was groundbreaking and helped them immensely in reaching domination in the PC space. A lot of barely-technical consumers will not have heard of AMD or other minor competitors, but they will recognize Intel and buy accordingly. Techies don't care too much about brands, but non-techies do. Part…

Sure, they spend on marketing, they're visible to the public, and their products are popular, those don't mean they have a brand -- a wide and loyal base of customers asking for their products by name for subjective reasons.

The chips sell because they're the best. If people really wanted "Intel" (and knew what they were even buying there) and not just the cheapest / fastest / longest lasting device regardless of how or why it has those properties, Intel's attempts to push into mobile despite failing to hit the required price/performance/power points might have worked like management always pretended it was going to.

They have a very polished image and spend plenty to get broad awareness. Plenty of visibility across all segments, it's not that they failed to capture mobile end-customer's eyeballs, it's that they failed to deliver a mobile chip with an ROI to mobile OEMs.

The most fervent Intel fanboy can't buy your Meego/Moblin/Whatever(Maybe people will forget it failed if we rename it every year)-powered Intel-chip phone if it never hits the market because it fails to have a day's battery life and the OS is basically vaporware (we can't ship updates for existing systems, we're too busy with politics, switching UI toolkits and starting over).

Intel pays to try to build a brand and labors under the assumption that means it has one (for instance, wanting to build their own Platform [SOC+OS+App store] thinking the brand will pull it to market despite reality, instead of just accepting Android from the beginning) but it simply doesn't. All the marketing money looks to be just a bonfire.

Back when AMD got a foothold and was able to be competitive on price, people bought them, I don't remember seeing any AMD commercials.

If people only love you in the categories where you're objectively the best, maybe it's not because you have the cool circuit pattern branding, threw all those parties and bought those super bowl spots.

No matter how much they spend and pretend to be a consumer brand, it just doesn't matter one bit outside the ROI for OEMs and ISVs, since those are Intel's customers, they are only ones making buying decisions of any consequence, and they're never going to buy a part that's detrimental to their own bottom line. Intel Inside partnership was in my opinion about OEMs fleecing the marketing spend for a reduced bill of materials. The sticker meant nothing, no consumers really cared. Enthusiasts only cared when Intel meant it was a better chip, only a minority of that enthusiast minority would prefer a weaker Intel chip over an alternative.

If I were to call my grandmother (70s), mother (50s) and niece (20s) and ask them if they'd prefer a computer with an Intel chip in it, I suppose they'd say yes (and as much as my ego might want that to be because I worked there, it's most probably the ads). However I happen to know that two of the three of the CPUs in question are AMD. Why? I don't know, but the relatives all buy cheap HP or Dell Windows machines (choosing those OEM brands despite better options, real brand effect) on a whim (a.k.a when the last computer's OS installation became unbearable) from the nearest Best Buy (picking that retail brand despite better options, a brand effect) and the OEM chose an AMD part (probably for margin reasons, creating lines of products for undiscriminating consumers) and these relatives didn't notice or didn't care (no brand effect). I wonder if I asked them if their computer had an Intel CPU, if they might even think that they do. I'll try that next time I see them.

No matter how hard Intel pretends they're like organizations with similar marketing spend, they simply don't have a brand like those do: there's no verticals and no consumers aside from self-built-PC enthusiasts, and for consumers the latter are quite a touch more objective than those in fashion or apparel.

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

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the sense of VR/4K the CPU is way less important than the GPU and we still have some headroom on those even with existing process, what will be interesting is when everyone else's process catches up with where Intel is now, they've generally stayed out in front of everyone else for a long time (except AMD for a spell). I'm really looking forwards to VR if it catches on though, having an insanely high resolution he…

Good point. Nvidia seems like the exciting company in this regard. I have a bad feeling they're going to tumble because the latest announcements related to Pascal have focused on deep learning instead of 4K for consumers. As far as I know, they haven't even announced their consumer Pascal cards yet. The rumor I've read online is announcements in June.

What would it mean for Nvidia to focus on 4k? Do the new screen resolutions require architectural innovations in the GPU? (Honest question. I'm not a graphics engineer)

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

#320
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Me as well, I built an i5-2500K system backend 2010(ish), it's still my main home desktop, 32GB RAM and an SSD and it's as fast as the machine at work that is two generations newer (or more correct it's imperceptibly slower). Things have really levelled out for average loads even developer loads (mostly do web dev, run vagrant machines that kind of thing). I can't see me upgrading til this thing dies tbh.

That's what I've got as well. I'll probably build a new machine (actually, I'll just buy a NUC) this Spring. Another big factor in not upgrading is the effort involved in setting up a new Windows machine. I'm sure I'm in for at least 30 hours on that front.
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