Intel flattens inside the box

Spins things a different way

Chip giant Intel always looks on the bright side. Or, to put it another way, it spins the news to pretend things are better than they actually are.

The press release to match its third quarter financial results, for example, is a classic of its type.The press release to match its third quarter financial results, for example, is a classic of its type.

Intel chose to head up its “news” by headlining the release by saying data centres, the internet of things, and memory business “all achieved record revenue”.

But, in fact, although third quarter revenues amounted to $ 16.1 billion, that’s only six percent compared to the third quarter last year – a rise that’s far from stratospheric compared to its gory (sic) days.

If you break out the different business divisions at Intel, the numbers present a different story.

Its client computing group generated $ 8.9 billion in the financial third quarter – that’s flat compared to the same quarter last year.  Because it’s not tick tocking any more and badly missed the boat on the tossing waves of the mobile market essentially the client group is stagnating.

Data centre revenues amounted to $ 4.9 billion, up seven percent compared to the third quarter last year.

And the groups that Intel really wants to highlight, although they account for a fraction of the revenues of the main two streams of currency are $ 849 million for its internet of things group – up 23 percent, and $ 891 million for its non volatile memory group – up 37 percent.

There may be trouble ahead, but Brian Krzanich, Intel’s CEO, claimed Intel is “on track to a record year” and it’s going to pour the champagne, play the music and dance, because of its future artificial intelligence and autonomous driving things.

Some of the realities are in the section dealing with “forward looking statements”, where Intel said that its results can be affected by all sorts of things, including war, politics, bad economic conditions and even the UK referendum to withdraw from the European Union.