Intel Corp chopped the price of some Pentium4 personal-computer processors by as much as 29 percent, as the biggest semiconductor maker tries to jump-start sales of its newest PC chips. Rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc followed suit with its own price cuts.
Intel reduced the cost of a 2GHz Pentium4 chip to US$401 from US$562, the company said on its Web site. The price of a 1.9GHz version fell 27 percent to US$273 from US$375, with the 1.8GHz chip dropping 12 percent to US$225 from US$256.
Advanced Micro and Intel have both lowered prices this year as they fought to win customers during an industrywide slump.
Intel already had slashed the price of the Pentium4 by as much as 84 percent since its November introduction. Analysts including Salomon Smith Barney's Jonathan Joseph and Lehman Brothers Inc's Dan Niles predicted this round of reductions in July and August.
Santa Clara, California-based Intel said earlier this month that sales this quarter will be US$6.2 billion to US$6.8 billion.
Company officials since January had been calling for a recovery later this year, and now say a recovery is unlikely by year's end after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Even before the attacks, analysts were predicting the worst decline in the chip industry's history.
Intel lowered other prices as well. The cost of a 2 GHz Xeon chip for workstations used in engineering jobs dropped 26 percent to US$455, with Pentium IIIs for servers down as much as 11 percent. Intel also trimmed the prices of some Pentium III desktop-computer chips.
Advanced Micro, Intel's biggest competitor in the market for PC processors, lowered the cost of its Athlon XP 1800+ by 12 percent to US$223 from US$252, spokeswoman Cathy Abbinanti said.
The older 1.4GHz Athlon dropped to US$125 from US$130.
A 1.1GHz Duron for cheaper PCs fell to US$89 from US$103, with a 1GHz model down to US$74 from US$89, and a 950MHz version at US$69 from US$75.
The Sunnyvale, California-based company expects an operating loss this quarter, with sales little changed to posting percentage growth in the high single digits.
Worldwide PC sales dropped 12 percent to 30.6 million units in the third quarter from 34.6 million a year earlier, Gartner Inc's Dataquest unit said this month. PC sales are forecast to decline this year for the first time in more than 15 years.
CHAOS: Iranians took to the streets playing celebratory music after reports of Khamenei’s death on Saturday, while mourners also gathered in Tehran yesterday Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in a major attack on Iran launched by Israel and the US, throwing the future of the Islamic republic into doubt and raising the risk of regional instability. Iranian state television and the state-run IRNA news agency announced the 86-year-old’s death early yesterday. US President Donald Trump said it gave Iranians their “greatest chance” to “take back” their country. The announcements came after a joint US and Israeli aerial bombardment that targeted Iranian military and governmental sites. Trump said the “heavy and pinpoint bombing” would continue through the week or as long
An Emirates flight from Dubai arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday afternoon, the first service of the airline since the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Saturday. Flight EK366 took off from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at 3:51am yesterday and landed at 4:02pm before taxiing to the airport’s D6 gate at Terminal 2 at 4:08pm, data from the airport and FlightAware, a global flight tracking site, showed. Of the 501 passengers on the flight, 275 were Taiwanese, including 96 group tour travelers, the data showed. Tourism Administration Deputy Director-General Huang He-ting (黃荷婷) greeted Taiwanese passengers at the airport and
TRUST: The KMT said it respected the US’ timing and considerations, and hoped it would continue to honor its commitments to helping Taiwan bolster its defenses and deterrence US President Donald Trump is delaying a multibillion-dollar arms sale to Taiwan to ensure his visit to Beijing is successful, a New York Times report said. The weapons sales package has stalled in the US Department of State, the report said, citing US officials it did not identify. The White House has told agencies not to push forward ahead of Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), it said. The two last month held a phone call to discuss trade and geopolitical flashpoints ahead of the summit. Xi raised the Taiwan issue and urged the US to handle arms sales to
State-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) yesterday said that it had confirmed on Saturday night with its liquefied natural gas (LNG) and crude oil suppliers that shipments are proceeding as scheduled and that domestic supplies remain unaffected. The CPC yesterday announced the gasoline and diesel prices will rise by NT$0.2 and NT$0.4 per liter, respectively, starting Monday, citing Middle East tensions and blizzards in the eastern United States. CPC also iterated it has been reducing the proportion of crude oil imports from the Middle East and diversifying its supply sources in the past few years in response to geopolitical risks, expanding
RSS