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Forget about AMD, guys. The real news is this:TSMC revenue guidance down from prior year, Capex going down to 8 billion. Where is fastpathguru when you need him? He was talking big about TSMC outspending Intel in Capex. Now there is only one left really outspending: Samsung. I am really bullish about that company. They have all they need to compete with Intel/Micron for the final pole position in semiconductors. I suspect Intel not to have a lead anymore at 10nm. Intel should hurry to build up the foundry business and squeeze the lights out of TSMC together with Samsung. That would be a nice duopoly in semiconductors: Intel/Micron on one side, Samsung on the other. I guess they wouldn't care to harm each other with low prices, what do you think? There is no way the world would accept only one semiconductor company to deliver all the memory and high end logic chips in this world and Samsung really needs the money since its mobile phone business isn't doing well. Samsung Electronics is still dirt cheap and the balance sheet is very strong, much stronger than Intel's for example. A clear buy in my opinion.
I doubt TSMC will be in time with 10nm, especially after their spending cut. I expect Intel and Samsung to be first. I expect Apple to give all orders to TSMC for their next CPUs to support them, but that will lead to Apple being not the first on a leading edge process. Probably won't harm sales of the iPhone too much, but I predict its sales to come down sharply in the years coming anyway. I don't see many people replacing their iPhone 6 with the 1000$ nuts expensive iPhone 6s.
TSMC and Qualcomm really get squeezed by dismal tablet sales (wasn't that supposed to be the PC?) and by Samsung mainly using its own mobile chips instead of Qualcomm's. In addition, Intel is fighting a price war and enters the low cost market with SOFIA. We'll see how this unfolds, right fastpathguru & wthdk?
Thanks for the link, ibc! If one reads the article, you get a grasp of the prices Intel can ask for its SoCs. The question is: Is Intel price competitive producing them in its own fabs or not? Does 14nm CherryTrail beat the competition in price or is the 22nm BayTrail still cheaper (performance is similar, other than graphics)? If Intel would offer the highest performance SoC in the market (Atom class I mean), then they could ask for a few dollars more for these, maybe 3-4$ each. It really all comes down if Intel is cost competitive with its fabs, since they don't have to pay the royalties for ARM and graphics IP (as well as some interfaces) and no foundry margins. It really gets interesting with Broxton and hopefully integrated comms by end of 2016. Then we'll really see if Intel has the roadmap to get significant share in the smartphone market, which would harm TSMC and Qualcomm a lot.
Samsung can do the same, though. They have to pay for ARM and other licenses, but they have their own fabs, which are basically on par with Intel's (a lead even in terms of foundry business and integration capabilities I'd say). I still think Samsung is a good bet for the end game. They have the disadvantage of direct competition with the smartphone makers, though. Intel is neutral there.
I don't think Intel has much more than this one last shot on the mobile market. The relevance of this step is pretty clear, where smartphones are the only (modestly) growing market at the moment (with tablets declining even more than PCs - so much for all this PC is dead BS).
The subsidies for Atom were effective (but expensive). x86 is now a fully supported platform within the Android ecosystem. My Lenovo BayTrail tablet runs really smooth with Android 5 (official update). Browsing the web is fast and everything just runs as it should. Android 4.4 was much worse, at least with this device. Now it is "just" a matter of delivering the best SoC in the market.
Regarding the PC market, I still believe we'll have very good sales by end of this year and next year. Next year needs to mark the turnaround in mobile, otherwise I'll give up on this stock.
I'm a Samsung shares owner now. I had a deeper look into the company this summer and the balance sheet is very clean and strong. They are under pressure with their mobile business, but almost half of their income is generated by their semiconductor business already. They invested mainly into the semiconductor business last year and I suppose they'll continue doing so. They clearly outspend Intel and TSMC and they will continue to do so. Including its memory business, I'd say that Samsung already is the biggest semiconductor company in the world, certainly in terms of volume.
Maybe Apple will try to avoid being Samsung's customer but I suppose they'll come back once they realize that TSMC just can't keep pace, which I am pretty sure about. I believe that the semiconductor business will be dominated by Samsung and Intel/Micron in the future, where Intel still needs to find its position in the foundry business. Investing in one of the last men standing will pay out nicely I guess. Samsung and Intel/Micron is my bet.
Samsung Electronics' valuation is so low that I had to have a deeper look into the company. I couldn't find a weak spot in its balance sheet. This company has a huge amount of cash and generates big amounts of cash flow each year which easily pays for their fabs.
Funny, isn't it? Now Apple brings a 2 in 1 with a Pen, something they said was a useless class of devices (like converging a toaster with a refrigerator, Cook said once). Did Apple lose its mojo? I start to think it finally becomes true. We'll see about how the customer will embrace it. I suppose it will flop. The price tag is pretty steep (up to 1000$, with the keyboard costing 170$ plus). An Intel based Macbook Air costs less.
Apple's intention is pretty clear here. They want to make iOS their main operating system and get rid of Mac OS (and Intel, to increase margins). The question is, if customers will adopt it as an OS for actually performing work. The current Apps aren't designed for this type of usage and I doubt such apps will be developed before the iPad Pro is successful - which I kind of doubt will happen.
Regarding the performance claims: Could anyone provide benchmark figures for A8X so we can guesstimate A9X performance and compare it to Intel's current processor lineup? A decent benchmark (like SPEC) would be good to have, though I doubt figures are available for A8X, right?
In any case, Intel needs to wake up and finally bring some real performance gains with its new cores. It really looks like they need to get their butt kicked badly, like in the AMD success days, until they wake up. This time, it may be too late though, so they should really work on it now. Skylake is not impressing when it comes to performance gains.
First Windows 10 impression from my side:
I am running it on a BayTrail 1.3 GHz (1.8 turbo) quadcore. It is a 2 in 1 for 200 bucks for my son's birthday. It only has 32 GB of Flash and 2 GB RAM, so fairly low spec hardware.
I like the look of Windows 10. Windows 8 looked flat and, at least to me, old fashioned. Windows 10 looks modern.
It uses only 8 GB of flash on the computer, which is very good in my opinion. 2GB RAM seems to be enough but at the lower end of the scale.
Edge is a very good browser. I like its minimalistic style and it is very fast. I won't install another browser yet, since this is the first Microsoft browser which doesn't actually force you to switch (my opinion).
For Adblock, it needs some system file modification and a registry tweak to recover performance - that should be easier (Edge doesn't support plugins so far). With Adblock turned on, it runs really smooth on this little machine.
Overall, performance is very good. A lot better than Android on the same hardware in my opinion. Microsoft knows the OS and software stuff definitely better than Google.
The UI is, in desktop mode, not so much different to what you are used to on Windows 7. It's easier to get used to it than with Windows 8, but it's still a big change. Settings have been unified much better, but there are still several places where you find more exotic settings.
What I don't like is that you need to sign up for two Microsoft accounts when you want to install a child account. I don't see a reason for this, since it is only adding a local user.
And then there's also some typical Microsoft ignorance stuff. The battery icon doesn't display a percentage or even time that is left. Battery is basically full, half empty or empty. What were they thinking?
Also going through folders in Explorer is confusing, since many folders are actually virtual libraries, where you can't continue to nagivate the folder structure from (e.g. your home directory). That sucks - also that you often cannot create a folder in those directories.
Sometimes, you can control things better by touching the screen, sometimes better by keyboard and mouse. This still needs some tweaking from Microsoft so you can use both methods equally - just not there yet.
So, overall, there is stuff to like, stuff to dislike. Microsoft should fix these issues, which are mainly minor issues in my opinion. The main question will be that of usability. Will existing Win 7 users not be confused too much by the new UI? I have a hard time answering that.
Trade for today: x10 short on Sandisk. Let's see how this turns out ...
From Intels presentation, 3D XPoint looks like it is stackable. Maybe their goal ist to make this a Flash replacement, since 3D NAND is going into the same direction. It probably is easier to stack this technology. If so, it could end up being cheaper than flash, which would be equal to printing money (unless patents run out before this happens and the competition catches up).
I'd say it either replaces flash or it isn't going to be disruptive. If it has the capability of replacing flash, it will be a huge money maker for Intel and Micron.
Another important question is: Will it fill Intels fabs or does it need new fabs?
Why didn't Sandisk's share price move from this announcement. They should be affected most. Maybe it's a good idea to short the company before the market realizes this?
Ok, since everyone here seems to be challenged to give some industry forecast:
I expect Apple to run into serious trouble within one year from now. iPhone6 took all that "finally a larger iPhone" "innovation" and there doesn't seem to be much Apple is innovating with to stay 700-800$ per phone sexy (certainly not replaced every two years). I even guess that people, even in the US, start to understand that they are paying the expensive device with their monthly mobile bills ...
The iWatch will flop and Apple will keep doing stupid stuff like going into the car business (what the heck)? Since Apple is 80% image (and 20% really nice hard and software), that's going to harm the company in the long term, especially in China. Not a good investment anymore.
Smartphone sales in particular will cool down quite a bit with everyone in this business harmed by cutthroat competition. Intel will take its beatings in the meantime destroying the prices a bit more, starving the competing fabs, especially TSMC. Goodbye 10nm till 2017 Capex, TSMC.
I expect a significant rebound in PC sales within one year, with Intel making really nice profits. 2 in 1 will replace tablets since Windows 10 makes them actually useful devices (well, there's hoping at least). Windows 10 will do fine but Microsoft probably still didn't get it in general (and never will I fear).
SSDs will start to replace moving harddisks. I still tend to short Seagate and/or Western Digital, but I will wait for the Windows 10 upcycle and the increasing price competitiveness of SSDs (by end of next year maybe). Nice short opportunity here.
Intel will not make significant improvements in smartphones since they are just too dumb. They will destroy prices for Qualcomm and the likes, making those unable to invest (already happening), which is good. Broxton won't be ready until end of next year and for mobile, it would need an integrated modem, which won't be available until mid/end of 2017, which is too late for it being competitive. Intel can fix it with an improved 10nm redesign, but as history tells us, they will screw it up again - but maybe the, until then, weak competition will actually give them an undeserved window of opportunity.
Investment thesis: If I am not fully convinced by mid/end of 2016 that Intel will fix its mobile issues and finally takes the foundry business serious, I am out.
Some snippets from the transcript:
HMC is more evolution than revolution. Though it makes a lot of sense for denser packaging of memories. I recall that recent DDR standards actually got faster for mobile than for PCs, since those are closer coupled and therefore require less power and offer higher clock speeds. Especially for Intel's fast CPUs in the 4 GHz range, this makes a lot of sense and should offer a nice performance increase. In addition, GPUs need more bandwidth. Probably also something that is easier to have with chip stacking technologies.
Samsung is working on chip stacking technologies for quite a while already, so that certainly is not exclusive to Intel/Micron. But Intel can provide a high performance integrated package including the CPU and accelerators/GPU that others just can't, so there's some exclusivity for Intel.
It may allow them to catch a significant share of the memory market for PCs in the long term - but Micron will ask for its share as well and there will be competition I guess.
Um, ok, let me see - last year at the same time, we had a nice recovery in PC sales, then, short before the Windows 10 release, it suddenly stutters. And now, all these analysts really try to tell me that Windows 10 will not lead to a recovery and that this has nothing to do with the Windows 10 release in front of us?
I am really wondering what these idiots will tell us by the end of the year.
A lot of speculation about new memory technology introduced by Intel with Micron. I am in principal no advocate of new memory technologies, since there have been so many announced in the past and basically none of them really affected the domination of the old DRAM and NAND technology. Nevertheless, this doesn't mean there won't a a decent substitute for these technologies, especially when reaching structures in the molecular range.
What I found especially interesting was in the end of the article:
Russ Fischer asks the right question: Why didn't Intel buy Micron.. Intel could have bought Micron for the price of Altera a bit more than a year ago. Even a majority ownership today would be possible at the same price. With their knowledge of the semiconductor market, the consolidation in the memory business and their empty fabs, that would have been the much better deal, especially at Micron's much lower valuation.
I really hope Intel won't screw it up with the acquisition this time, otherwise this is an expensive mistake.
Bought an Odys Winpad V10 for my son's birthday. This is exceptional value at 200 bucks. It offers a Baytrail Quadcore at 1,8 GHz turbo, a decent keyboard with magnetic connection, 2GB RAM and 32 GB Flash, a Micro SD Slot and an HD Panel. Windows 8.1 installed, with Office. There are Android emulators available so you can use both.
This is exceptional value for the money and a perfect entry to light computing and media consumption for my 8 year old. Who needs Android for that?
Bought an Odys Winpad V10 for my son's birthday. This is exceptional value at 200 bucks. It offers a Baytrail Quadcore at 1,8 GHz turbo, a decent keyboard with magnetic connection, 2GB RAM and 32 GB Flash, a Micro SD Slot and an HD Panel. Windows 8.1 installed, with Office. There are Android emulators available so you can use both.
This is exceptional value for the money and a perfect entry to light computing and media consumption for my 8 year old. Who needs Android for that?