In terms of geographic regions, Intel said it will continue to expand its reach in emerging markets such as Russia, China, Brazil, India and Mexico, where PC growth is strongest. Those five countries, in fact, account for 17 percent of Intel's sales today, said Mike Splinter, executive vice president of sales and marketing. To reach these international markets, the company will need to create stronger relationships with dealers and system integrators, which wield substantial power in those markets. Currently, the company works with around 90,000 integrators, including 3,000 in Russia alone. Within five years, Intel expects the number to expand to 200,000. Meanwhile, in the United States the company said it will continue its push to take share in the server market with Xeon- and Itanium-based servers. The company said it met its internal goal for Intel-based server sales into the 1,000 largest global companies. Revenue remains fairly flat. In this environment, the company will continue to cut costs, said chief financial officer Andy Bryant. Since the company's employment peak in the first quarter of 2001, total employee count is down 13 percent. Among other notes:
- A 3GHz Pentium 4 will come out this quarter, Otellini said. Sources said it would launch on 14 November.
- Prescott, the successor to the current version of the Pentium 4, is expected to feature a new version of hyperthreading, called HT2, while an accompanying chipset will come with a security technology called LaGrande that prevents outsiders from looking at data on a hard drive. Prescott is due in the second half of 2003.
- Intel plans to integrate "soft access points" for wireless access into PCs. This extra software will let home notebook users connect to the Internet by using a wired home PC as a bridge. This technology could help expand wireless home networking, Otellini said.
- A 2GHz Xeon for multiprocessor servers is due later this quarter.
- Itanium will contain multiple cores, or processing units, Otellini said. Next year, three operating systems, a number of applications and virtually all of the major databases will be running on Itanium.
See Chips Central for the latest headlines on processors and semiconductors.
To find out more about the computers and hardware that these chips are being used in, see ZDNet UK's Hardware News Section.
Have your say instantly, and see what others have said. Go to the Chips Central Forum.
Let the Chips Central editor know what you think by email. And sign up for the weekly Chips Central newsletter.
