Storm Clouds Gathering For Intel's Communications Unit?

Thu, May 18th 2006 11:46am — Carlo Longino

Intel's performance has been lagging a bit of late, with shareholders upset about the stock price, some even calling for a change of leadership. CEO Paul Otellini said in April that the company would restructure, and now some analysts believe Intel will shed its flash memory and communications chip units. While Intel has become a huge manufacturer of WiFi chips, built largely around its co-opting of WiFi with its Centrino brand, it's not been able to become a serious rival to the likes of TI and Qualcomm in the mobile-phone processor market. It also has been hyping WiMax relentlessly, but the technology still doesn't look like it's anywhere close to being a success, despite Intel's repeated investments in companies to build them into customers. Intel's thrived as the 800-pound gorilla in the PC processor space, but AMD's recent market share gains are taking their toll, and its strategy to branch out to mobile devices really hasn't provided Intel with the growth it had hoped.

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