Intel lowers revenue forecasts, blames Windows XP users

[LSG501]

I cant comment on windows 8/8.1 or 10 but 7 bloats up like eating prunes all day.

Not as bad as xp, but still eventually eats itself alive with it's own updates.

To be fair even windows 8 does this unless you 'disk clean' the updates, even that isn't easy, you have to dig deeper than you should need to to get to it. The amount of times I've 'gained' 5+GB back from just cleaning out the left overs from updates is stupid. Why they don't clean up the residual junk automatically after the updates I have no idea... or even after say a month.

[kalniel]

I cant comment on windows 8/8.1 or 10 but 7 bloats up like eating prunes all day.

Not as bad as xp, but still eventually eats itself alive with it's own updates.

My win 7 install size hasn't changed all that much, and it's kept fully up to date. Make sure you run 'disk clean' every now and again and check the option to remove old update install files.

[voxstream]

Well, as always, you have to blame someone or something when a plan doesn't come together.
I personally think it's our fault for not spending our hard won money with Intel.

[watercooled]

I wonder if buying market share in the mobile space has anything to do with it?

[kalniel]

I wonder if buying market share in the mobile space has anything to do with it?

Buying market share should never lead to decreased revenue.

[watercooled]

I read 'profits' for some reason. Really need to stop posting after glancing at articles for a fraction of a second.

[crossy]

Buying market share should never lead to decreased revenue.

Erm, if you're "dumping" product into the market place at, or even below, the cost that it takes to produce it then surely you'll be making a loss so profits will be down.

Okay, once you've "bought" the market share then you can get to exploit it and your revenues will go up. But in the short term the costs of entering a new market like that (dishonestly?) will surely hit your bottom line because you've got to produce the product, market it, etc but you won't be taking in much for it. That said, it's been a long, long, long time since I did any economics.

[kalniel]

Erm, if you're "dumping" product into the market place at, or even below, the cost that it takes to produce it then surely you'll be making a loss so profits will be down.

Watercooled spotted his mistake that I was making fun of. You can make all the loss you like with no effect on revenue. Profits, of course, might go down, but that's not the same as revenue.

[crossy]

Watercooled spotted his mistake that I was making fun of. You can make all the loss you like with no effect on revenue. Profits, of course, might go down, but that's not the same as revenue.

Not going to disagree (wouldn't dare) but an incidental thought occurs - journalists talk about companies "losing focus" when trying to diversify, so wouldn't perhaps Intel's desire/greed to get into mobile mean that they put less resource into the mainstream, so the income stream would get hit.

One vibe I'm getting (maybe wrongly) is that there's folks here saying that their current SB/IB processors are "good enough" so there's no real desire to go for an "unnecessary" upgrade and the "tech-heads" have been holding their breath for the leap to DDR4. I must admit that jumping OS is usually a good incentive to do hardware upgrades, so maybe there's something to the charge that a lack of drive from XP is hitting the hardware sellers.

Although this is me talking theoretically - lets be honest, AMD doesn't really have anything to trouble Intel at the mid- and high-end desktop side anyway, so it's a case of "buy Intel" or "buy Intel".

[Kevsta]

I think Intel's problem is three fold:

Firstly once we started down the route of multiple cores the necessity of constantly upgrading the processor became less of the limiting factor. Before my first Core2 processor I would regularly see my processer running at 50-100% for long periods of time. Now 5-6% is the norm.

Secondly more people now have a smart phone and/or a tablet and spend more time one those devices, and less on what was the main computer. The computer now relegated to less essential role, and therefore is deemed worthy of spending money on upgrading. Also in developing countries mobile technology is becoming more popular as the infrastructure to put in wireless networks is easier, and also power outages are making a traditional desktop computer less useful.

Thirdly, a lot of people who were hard core gamers and traditionally upgraded their machines every year have switched to either Xbox or PlayStation consoles, not everyone but a lot have.

[kalniel]

Not going to disagree (wouldn't dare)

*sad face*. Please imagine the sad cat in my avatar answering posts if it helps - disagreement is just part of discussion and what forums are good for - they'd be boring if every post was replied to with 'I agree' To clarify, I didn't mean I was making fun of any user personally, just the misreading.

but an incidental thought occurs - journalists talk about companies "losing focus" when trying to diversify, so wouldn't perhaps Intel's desire/greed to get into mobile mean that they put less resource into the mainstream, so the income stream would get hit.

Would is a bit strong, 'could' is certainly possible, though Intel are not the kind of company who would expand carelessly. But this is getting a little distant from the report we're talking about - I think it's saying they aren't shifting focus, in fact the quote is "What hasn't changed is Intel's strategy and our focus on executing to it" so it's just that the mainstream revenue is down, which they put down to:

-Weaker than expected demand for business desktop PCs
-PC supply chain maintaining lower inventory levels
-Lower than expected Windows XP refresh in small and medium business
-Macroeconomic challenges, especially in Europe
-Currency fluctuations, especially in Europe

One vibe I'm getting (maybe wrongly) is that there's folks here saying that their current SB/IB processors are "good enough" so there's no real desire to go for an "unnecessary" upgrade and the "tech-heads" have been holding their breath for the leap to DDR4. I must admit that jumping OS is usually a good incentive to do hardware upgrades, so maybe there's something to the charge that a lack of drive from XP is hitting the hardware sellers.

Yup - that's what the report says too, though it's largely talking about business users rather than home users.

Although this is me talking theoretically - lets be honest, AMD doesn't really have anything to trouble Intel at the mid- and high-end desktop side anyway, so it's a case of "buy Intel" or "buy Intel".

In some market segments, yes.

[DanceswithUnix]

... and the "tech-heads" have been holding their breath for the leap to DDR4.

Not sure about holding breath, but I am reluctant to spend money on DDR3 ram when DDR4 is likely to replace it even if DDR4 is unlikely to make any performance improvements to my main machine. Should be nice for integrated graphics though.

[peterb]

Though to be fair those mission critical doodads should all be on an incredibly segregated network (and certainly with no internet access) - if so then they're reasonably secured against the holes in the OS, but what's the plan for when the machine that's running them goes pop?

Run them in a VM on a Linux box!

[abaxas]

Random thought.... are we finally seeing the end of the 3 year business life cycle?

[crossy]

Random thought.... are we finally seeing the end of the 3 year business life cycle?

Yes, partly down to the "credit crunch", there's a lot less of the 3 year fixation - instead now it seems to be more a case of "replace when we must". For example, our desktops used to be replaced every 3 years, now you only get a new one if the current/old one is unfixably dead. And I'm seeing more of the accounts I look after being studiously interested in performance and capacity management. I say "studiously interested" because now it's being looked at from a high level in those companies rather than just being the raison d'etre of the Cap Plan folks.

Run them in a VM on a Linux box!

Actually some of our architects have been pushing a jump to virtualisation (true virtualisation though - ESX) as a way to get the best from RAS investment. Thinking is that if you've spent £2k on duplicate everything then it makes sense to put as much on that one box as possible and share that £2k outlay amongst many projects/customers. Mobility (vMotion, IBM's LPM, etc) means that it's also pretty easy to shift from a failing box. Funny thing is that the power of current kit is such that you can actually consolidate pretty heavily - so one box running 5VM's rather than 5 individual boxes. Which is good news for customers, but not good news if you sell server hardware and especially server components.

Makes me really wish I'd bought stock in VMware...

[RyanM]

"Windows, if it ain't broke ... then you've not switched it on."

Genius ... I can relate