Intel Pentium Case Study

Intel operates in an industry, which is comprised of products involving high research and development costs, continuous product improvement and new innovations. The companies in the industry are having high economies of scale and are knowledge based. It helps both the service and manufacturing sectors in the growth process. Intel is positioned as a leading company with its ability to adapt to technological changes and its strong relations with other businesses who are major buyers of integrated circuits. The industry in which it operates is very competitive and comes with high risks as

Stephen Richards’s actions were extremely serious; manipulating Computer Associates’ quarter end cutoff to align CA’s reported financial results with market expectations by violating the generally accepted accounting principles and their financial reporting responsibilities. According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Richards with other CA executives extended CA’s fiscal quarter, “ instructed and allowed subordinates to negotiate and obtain contracts after quarter end while knowing, or recklessly disregarding the fact that, CA would improperly recognize the revenue from those contracts, and failed to alert CA’s Finance or Sales Accounting Department that CA salespersons

From pioneering in memory DRAM semicon to exiting the low-margin DRAM market – Intel was primarily a Memory semicon manufacturer before it entered microprocessors in 1980s. Its added value in the memory industry in 1970s was very high because of its advances in MOS process to produce DRAM. However, with increase in competition and the advancement of Japanese conglomerates in the memory industry Intel was forced to play a chasing game to improve performance and reduce costs. In the mid-1980s, Intel’s market share in the core memory business was <1%, however it was continuing to invest in this domain. They finally exited the DRAM market, which was more of a cash burner with low-margins.

By the early 1980, Intel’s total share in DRAM was barely 1% and manufacturing was restricted to one fab out of Intel’s eight fab, where the Japanese semiconductor companies had captured nearly half of the world memory market. There are several factors that forced Intel to exit the DRAM market, those are the same lessons learned.

This report discusses the case study ‘Intel Research: Exploring the Future [1], published in 2005 by the Harvard Business School. The discussion is divided into three different sections: overview, analysis and conclusion.

Issue 4: Information Security officials failed to effectively trigger appropriate notifications and begin an investigation of the stolen data. The information security official’s incident report contained omissions and significant errors. This resulted in missed opportunity to re-create the contents of the laptop and external drive and to recognize the severity of the potential loss of data. The cybersecurity operations officials failed to ensure a timely investigation and notifications were made regarding the severity of the lost data (Opfer, 2006).

3. How concerned should amd be about intel’s imminent new product plan? will they hamper

This company in the first place began an initiative without gaining proper knowledge on the benefits and cost of this new venture. They had not done the proper research for just how well this venture would work for them. In doing so, they are expected to be ready for anything that comes their way. Any entrepreneur understands that business is just a matter of taking chances. Anything can happen at any time. When this disappointment happens, the leadership should have sat down to evaluate and discuss the options available to them. They should have counted their opportunity cost. If they would have done this efficiently, then it would have been planned to see that several other options were available to them. Instead of pulling out, they should have looked for other implementation methods available. They should have also invested in security software that would ensure customer information safety.

• Negative Publicity: Since Oct 30th, we have encountered a self-propelled negative publicity campaign against Pentium brand and it doesn’t seem to fade away if we don’t do anything.

1. Discuss whether the analysts following Intel appear to have been influenced by any biases, both generally and in their reaction to Intel’s announcement in September 2000 (3 marks).

With Intel have very few substitutes in the microprocessor industry, it is it is most certain that current customers will not want to switch and use another company’s products. High switching cost presents low bargaining power to the customers mainly because it would be very expensive to switch to a competitor, and since Intel is the leader in the market, switching

Intel excels at top-down innovation, where highly differentiated components and electronics command a high gross margin relative to competitors, enabling faster design wins with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and development partners. This top-down innovation flow within Intel is so dominant, that the product design teams are significantly more productive than even the most advanced business process management teams (Segerstrom, 2007). Microprocessors and the follow-on Internet, networking, security and integrated motherboard products are all predicated on this top-down innovation cycle that leads to product line proliferation in Intel (Zimmerman, 2010). DRAMS were undifferentiated in structure, lacked industry standards that could create differentiated performance or compatibility based on adherence or alignment to standards or customer requirements (Nicholson, 1997). Intel chose to compete on the only other area of their core strength as a company, which is quality management and yield levels (Clark, Walz, Turner, Miszuk, 1993). Getting the yields for DRAMS to 60%, which for a brief period of time lead the global industry, only served to accelerate a very high level of commoditization in the industry (Voss, 1998).

PC industry is characterized by fast declining ASP year over year. Together with the increasing component costs from 2009, both Dell and HP are facing squeezing profit margins (HP 2010; Dell 2010). In the first quarter of 2011, HP’s gross margin for its Personal System Group (PSG) is as low as 6.4% (Epstein 2011). Similarly, Dell’s gross margin of PCs is often 3 to 5% (Wang 2010). This indicates that if both

Intel, also known as Integrated Electronics, is a company that manufactures and sells various types of electronic equipment and hardware. It was founded by Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce in 1968 and has since grown to be a commonly used consumer brand. Intel must ensure that its products are consistently well-made, especially when its products affect the consumer’s experience with the technology he or she is using. Because Intel must implement quality in a wide variety of products, the best practice for the company is to have a physical separation between its departments and to focus on the quality of each individual aspect of its product creation; this will allow each department to specialize in their work functions and allow the company to separate each task effectively.

IBM’s marketing efforts missed the mark. No one ever looked at the IBM ‘s PC as being inferior, but IBM did nothing to sell it.