Intel Corp (INTC)

[mmoy]

I follow Nike (and I'm a customer) and I saw that headline and was wondering about it. They are already the 500 pound gorilla in the business and they have lots of competition but they are aggressively creating new technical products in clothing and I assume that they're doing the same thing with shoes. There have been a lot of technical improvements in shoes the past 7 years, particularly in cushioning.

I was at the Nike Store last week and saw a long-sleeve shirt with Dri-Fit on the skin side and wool on the outside. It was very thin and looked like a nice thing to wear when running outside on very cold days. I'd never seen anything like it before. This stuff isn't exactly inexpensive either.

So Nike is making improvements in shoes and clothes and they're getting people to pay lots of money for these improvements (which probably don't cost them a lot in manufacturing).

Can I see it happening? A 60% gain in four years for a large, established company is a tall order and the world is dealing with global deflation. I think that it's possible (a lot of runners are nuts on the amount that they spend for gear), but I'll wait and see.

Intel's not a consumer company (mostly) - it does several things really well and makes a lot of money doing that. I guess that Intel needs to continue to lead in what they do best - I just don't know how big the market is out there to gain.