Intel Corp (INTC)

[wbmw]

Regarding Black Friday...

I went through a lot of the flyers in today's paper, and every retailer out there is listing tablets as their door-busting sale item. Unfortunately, not a single one had an Intel processor in it....

There were Nexus 7's, Asus Transformers, Samsung Galaxy Tabs, and more than a few cheap China rip-offs. Everything was heavily discounted, from $249 Samsung tabs, to $349 Transformers. The China tabs sold for $69-89, and I'd be interested in at least playing with one of these for a little while to check out if they are usable or not.

To make matters worse, AMD had a huge resurgence in the door-busting laptops, selling their E-300 APU in a 15" laptop for $189. Everyone had at least one AMD based laptop flashed on the Black Friday discount pages.

I believe these are very negative indicators for Intel in Q4. I'd hate to see what it does to the market share numbers. While there were plenty of Pentium based laptops for under $300, you know that the discount-drunk holiday shoppers are going to be laser focused on the cheapest price tags. It could be a perfect storm against Intel, finishing a disappointing 2012 - even as Clover Trail creeps slowly onto the scene. Intel really needed that product 6 months ago to have had a shot at flooding the holiday retail channels....