Intel Corp's chief executive yesterday said the world's largest computer chip company was not suffering from overcapacity and asserted that new areas were emerging to increase global demand for microprocessors.
"We build our capacity based on the long-term growth outlook for the industry," Craig Barrett told business leaders on the second day of his visit to India, where Intel employs 2,400 people.
PHOTO: AP
"We have to invest for the future ... We have a multiyear outlook," he said in the southern Indian technology hub of Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka state.
Barrett defended Intel's continued expansion of production capacities and high levels of inventory that have outstripped current levels of sales.
Intel currently sustains inventory worth nearly US$3.18 billion, sparking fears that it might have to cut inventories or offer discounts to computer companies to liquidate stocks.
However, Barrett maintains the market has enough appetite to tide over seasonal imbalances in demand and supply. "Capacity and demand are in balance for about one microsecond every three years," he said.
"The popular press and financial analysts often tell us to do the wrong thing ... They typically have a one-day outlook," he said.
He said at least two areas promise to increase demand for chips in the near future -- computing in health care and an emerging wireless communication standard called Wi-Max.
"I would say medical sciences are the next big opportunity for Intel," Barrett said.
He said an increased use of computers to study patterns of an individual's genes to provide more accurate treatment would drive the sales of chips in the coming years.
Barrett said Intel would launch its first chips based on the Wi-Max standard next year.
Wi-Max, called the 802.16 standard in technical parlance, is an extension of the increasingly popular Wi-Fi, or 802.11 wireless standard. Equipment made with the new standard will have the potential to communicate over a range of up to 50km. No company offers products in the Wi-Max standard yet.
With Wi-Max, "we will offer our customers competitive advantage over some of the competing technologies ... such as cable and TV," Barrett said.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by