Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
I think it is still the lack of integration which holds off Intel's success in mobile. I don't know what makes them take so many years to integrate a modem - it kind of sounds ridiculous. Big Intel can't integrate its own (!) modem within years of development. That's confusing, to say the least.
In any case, when they finally start executing, they are competitive in that space. I have no reason to doubt it. Yes, tick tock won't be enough and they may still struggle in the higher end but they have a much better cost position, at least in theory. Once they finally start to use it, they will penetrate the market and weaken the ARM ecosystem. Intel's army of engineers has to finally deliver, it's really unbelievable for me how much they failed in the past. I don't think it is a lack of capability, though.
Well, maybe the shortage of high end Intel CPUs has to do with headlines like this: 2 million copies of Fallout 4 sold in 20 days! The current game releases almost all require high end hardware since they are designed as multiplatform titles that run on PS4 and Xbox One, which have significantly better hardware than their predecessors. Most blockbuster titles arrived in the market before christmas this years (it takes time to develop these titles on the new console hardware).
Apple buys a small fab. What are they going to do with it? I guess it may help them with better physical knowledge of semiconductors, but on the other hand, they could just hire some experienced process guys, which would make more sense if they'd come from leading edge fabs.
Maybe Apple wants to become more vertically integrated, like Samsung, but so far, they lack the scale in terms of volume (not sales). They can easily afford it, though. Maybe they are only trying to develop their own mixed signal chips, like sensors etc, to differentiate from the remaining market. On the other hand, they could tape that out in foundries as well.
Many questions remain. Maybe just one more desperate move from Tim Cook to compensate for a lack of good ideas?
I have recently seen 1 TB SSDs for around 250$. I think it won't take long until classic HDDs will be replaced by SSDs. Maybe till end of this decade. That's a huge market.
Still thinking about shorting Seagate.
Besides: Toshiba considers selling part of its chip business. May be a chance for the chinese to get into memory, together with the Western Digital/Sandisk deal. It won't change much for Micron/Intel though, since the market is already shared between the three (Micron/Intel, Western Digital/Sandisk/Toshiba and Samsung). If the chinese will enter the business, it will mean that Sandisk/Toshiba won't rund out of money to continue to compete, though. Still large enough of a market for three competitors I think. They should just not start a price war where nobody can win, that's what I still fear a bit (especially from Samsung, since they have a small lead).
I don't think Intel would be interested in Globalfoundries assets. What should they do with it? Concerning process technology, there is not much Intel could learn from anyone in this world, just to improve its foundry know-how I think this would be too expensive as an aquisition and concerning capacity, Intel has more than enough fab capacity, including deprecated ones like the Dalian fab and the mothballed mega fab, remember? I doubt Intel is interested.
Just to get this straight: It was chipguy who got personal in the first place when accusing me of having an agenda of pushing Samsung at this board and saying I would work for them. I have not read a word from him about the content of my posts, which contained facts and news also regarding Intel.
Regarding self confirmation bias: Certainly everybody falls for it. That's exactly the purpose of such a board like this, in having a discussion about one's views and opinions regarding the competition now and in the future of a company you want, or don't want, to be invested in. I am not posting here to hear myself talking, no matter what chipguy will reply to this.
Now, everyone, what do think will the semiconductor landscape in the future, let's say 5-10 years from now, look like in your opinion? What technologies do you think will dominate by then, what will drive volume in semiconductors going forward, what role will high end processes play and what does economic scale have to do with it? And finally, which companies will benefit from this situation and which will have a tough time? That's a discussion that affects every Intel investor in my opinion.
And if you dare telling me that opinions about the future of a company are useless, then investing in individual stocks isn't for you.
Guys, I have news for you. I mean, real news!
Intel plans to invest into NVM fab. Micron is down sharply after this news but I can't really see why.
The original, brief, statement of Intel is this. Now, if you follow the link in that post, you'll get to ithis pdf.
To me, in the pdf, a completely different picture is presented. There's not only the talk about 3D NAND, but it talks about 3D XPoint also, that is supposed to be manufactured in a chinese Intel fab in Dalian, which was previously used for 65nm products. In the announcement, it states, among other, this:
@Fabless Fan
Just a more general question: Do you really think TSMC will survive the Capex war against Samsung and Intel? What is it TSMC can do that Samsung can't? TSMC is the financially weakest player in this group and Apple may try to support them, but do you really think this is going to be enough for TSMC to continue to spend 11 billion, ah, sorry, 8 billion a year for future fabs? Intel/Micron and Samsung are the gorillas in this game, not TSMC. In the semiconductor business, it was always about scale and now you think this is going to change suddenly? I don't!
Globalfoundries is already firing people and Samsung definitely will take a big chunk of TSMCs foundry business going forward. Together with Intel and Samsung also taking business from Qualcomm and the likes with their own mobile apps processors, there is not much left for TSMC to do for the fabless crowd ...
There are rumours that Samsung is also bidding for Sandisk. Maybe they are interested in this Memristor technology. I doubt Samsung needs Sandisk's expertise when it comes to flash memory, though (same goes for Micron).
Could be that they are only bidding to make this deal more expensive for Western Digital. I doubt Western Digital will have what it takes to compete with Samsung and Micron in the long term. Sandisk already is behind and Western Digital doesn't bring anything of importance to the flash business. Sandisk could become their tombstone.
Funny how Sandisk, as one of the remaining three relevant players in the gigantic flash business, seems to actually want to be sold.
Will we finally have only one company producing flash memory worldwide? I doubt it. Samsung and Micron will have a fat meal with the flash business in the future - Intel will also have its share. And don't forget the transition from magnetic HDD to SSD has just started. To me, this is one of the very few no-brainers in investing at the moment.