Intel Corp (INTC)

[Ixse]

Wbmw, re: saying that the downward guidance takes into account a week or two of OEM inventories that need to be burned off... in the third quarter, right? I thought I heard they guided inventory up slightly for the second quarter. Not entirely sure.

In hindsight I might have missed a buying opportunity last couple of days. OTOH they're scaling down share buy backs in Q2 to half of the value they spend in Q1. So it's not impossible that we might touch $19 again. Still the closer we get to Conroe/Woodcrest the smaller the chance that this will happen.

Also with Conroe ramping to 40% of the DT mainstream + performance segments in Q1/07 (source: Anandtech, slide excluded value segment), there's plenty of opportunity for AMD to sell A64 X2 in the mainstream market just below top end Conroe. They sure have sufficient capacity for it by then even at 90nm. So I think taking back unit and $$ share will be a relatively gradual thing turning into more serious share gains towards ~Q1/07.

Server is a slightly different story. I think as soon as Woodcrest hits the market it'll turn out pretty hard for AMD to convert more customers. AMD will probably keep selling very nicely to their current customer base until Woodcrest has ramped to a similar 40% of server processor units, at which time some current AMD customers will probably walk right back to Intel.

The best thing for Intel that I heard on the call was that Merom apparently will be launched in Q3 as well, in time for xmas shopping. That for me is reasonably significant.

NGA should be a block buster success but it needs ramping to gain back overall market share. As a result 3rd quarter guidance might not yet reflect significant $ share gains (Netburst will sell at even lower prices while NGA will about make up for that).

Just my 2c.

Regards,

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