Competitors
The trend in favour of mobility was most pronounced in Q2 of 2008. "The trend of mobile microprocessor unit growth outpacing the growth in desktop microprocessor units has continued, and shipments of our mobile microprocessors exceeded our desktop microprocessors for the first time in the second quarter of 2008," said the report
"We believe that the demand for mobile microprocessors will result in the increased development of products with form factors and uses that require low-power microprocessors."
Regarding seasonal sales trends, the worldwide recession has disrupted the usual pattern of sales being higher in the second half of the year due to ‘back to school' and Christmas. "This seasonal trend did not occur in 2008, and there can be no assurance that it will resume in the future," said the report.
Intel said it believes owning its own manufacturing facilities gives it a competitive advantage over its ‘fabless' competitors. But it stressed: "These facilities require significant up-front capital spending, and many of our competitors do not own such facilities because they may not be able to afford to do so or because their business models involve the use of third-party facilities for manufacturing and assembly and test."
The report also listed Intel's main competitors:
The following is a list of our main microprocessor competitors by market segment:
- Desktop: AMD and VIA
- Mobile: AMD and VIA
- Enterprise: AMD, IBM, and Sun Microsystems
- Embedded: AMD, Freescale Semiconductor, Inc., and VIA
In addition, our Intel Atom processor family competes against processors offered by AMD and VIA, and from companies using rival architectures, such as ARM and MIPS.
