AMD plans on shaking up its marketing strategy starting with its next round of business-oriented processors. Whereas previous iterations have fallen under the company’s B series (‘B’ for Business, of course), AMD will stick solely with its Phenom nomenclature, at least for its upcoming 3.2GHz business chip.
The Phenom II X4 97, as it will be called, will also come with 8MB of cache and a 95W TDP. This will replace the 3.0GHz Phenom II X4 B95 and rank as the fastest-running business processor in AMD’s lineup.
Expect the Phenom II X4 94 to debut sometime in early Q2 2010, Fudzilla reports. No word yet on price.
Image Credit: AMD
Despite a super-positive fourth-quarter earnings call, Intel wasn’t very pleased with enterprise spending in 2009, instead noting that consumers drove the company’s revenue up.
"It was not a robust year in the enterprise," said Paul Otellini, CEO, Intel.
Otellini also expects that to change in 2010 while Intel does its part in helping push the corporate market. Not only will Intel release its eight-core Nehalem EX Xeon processor for servers with four or more sockets, but the chip maker also plans to replace every chip in its server portfolio with 32nm Westmere parts, and do so within the next 90 days, Otellini said.
"Companies that haven’t bought in a while are — and probably have been for a while — planning their purchases for this week," John Spooner, an analyst with Technology Business Research, told eWeek. "So they can essentially put 32nm Xeon servers in their budgets now, and plan purchases for the rest of the year."
Spooner went on to say something we’ve heard several times before, which is that there exists a lot of pent up demand.
Image Credit: fmeusa.com
It looks like Intel really killed it in the fourth quarter of 2009, with revenue up about 28% year over year to $10.6 billion. These numbers are after the $1.25 billion settlement paid to rival AMD. Sales were so good, in fact, that Intel is proclaiming the return of consumer demand. ” We have seen a return of consumer demand and replenishment to normal inventory levels after the precipitous demand drop at the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009,” said Intel CFO Stacy Smith.
Intel is predicting continued momentum going into 2010. They are expecting revenue of about $9.7 billion this quarter. That’s nearly as much as the Q4 holiday shopping season. Wall Street’s own estimate is quite close at $9.35 billion.
Intel CEO Paul Otellini talked up Intel’s plans for 2010 in a call with analysts. He stressed the value of Nehalem and was looking forward to the introduction of the new 32nm process technology. He also held that Intel’s Atom processors would continue to dominate the low end of the market.
Earlier this week Intel reported better than expected numbers and said it was confident about the future ahead, which seems to be the theme for the quarter. No. 2 chip maker AMD said today that it lost money in the third quarter — $128 million to be exact , or 18 cents per share — which is less than the $134 million the company lost one year ago.
AMD’s revenue took a backward slide to the tune of 22 percent, settling in at $1.4 billion. The silver lining is that analysts had expected AMD’s loss to be in the neighborhood of 30 percent, so by that token, AMD is actually doing pretty well when graded on a curve.
Like every other company in the tech industry, AMD took a hit to its bottom line because of weak computer sales in the first half of the year. However, the chip maker’s shipments actually rose from the previous quarter, driven in large part by strong demand for mobile processors.
It’s been 8 months since AMD finalized its manufacturing spinoff deal, but a weak economy and slumping tech sector have made it difficult to discern what effect the deal has had on AMD’s numbers.
In a turbulent tech industry in an even shakier economy, Intel’s bottom line remains remarkably steadfast. The No. 1 chip maker today reported net income of $1.9 billion on shares of $9.4 billion. That breaks down to 33 cents per share, besting Wall Street’s projection of 28 cents on revenue of $9.06 billion.
"This momentum in the current economic climate, plus our product leadership, gives us confidence about our business prospects going forward," said Intel CEO Paul Otellini.
Otellini added that his company’s success is the result of having "the right products at the right costs at the right times for a recovering global economy." He specifically pointed out strong notebook growth, an area Intel has performed particularly well. And it doesn’t hurt that the chip maker has virtually no competition in the fast growing netbook and nettop sectors.
Looking ahead, Intel projects fourth quarter revenue to hit $10.1 billion, putting it on pace with last year’s numbers. It would also once again best Wall Street’s projection of $9.52 billion for Q4.
Image Credit: Intel
