Intel Corp (INTC)

[Maui]

Alan,
you bring up some interesting points. Though I disagree on many.

IMO,
1. Failure is not 'necessary', but inevitable when a company takes risks (like Intel does). You make it sound like one must fail (rather than one would) somewhat to succeed. Even more relevant is the frequency of failures in last 5 years over 5 years in early 1990s. You can say Intel is taking more risks, hence more failures. But I am talking about screw-ups in their core businesses, not in Intel Cap, or ICG. The frequency of failure in the area of core-competency is a result of inferior execution, more than additional risk-taking.

2. Public perception is huge, especially when your next growth is going to come from consumers. A recall hurts the image, when your marketing is trying to tout the quality of the product and severely hurts the brand name. I am willing to bet that Intel management will take Grantsdale recall and Tejas fiasco very seriously and find ways to fix it.

3. AMD : I didn't bring up AMD. Tecate did and now you did. I doubt if AMD is even discussed more than 20% of the time by Intel Execs. AMD has not gone anywhere for 2 decades, and not likely to do so on a sustained basis in future. It makes little sense to be discussing AMD so much on this thread (beside the entertainment value!). My criticism of Intels execution is not an acknowledgement of AMDs good execution. I would rather have Intel measure itself against what it has done in the past (early 90s) and what it is capable of doing with the resource it has.

Maui.