Intel Predicts First Quarter Revenue below Expectations, Market Share Falls

Intel Corp., the world’s largest semiconductor maker, lowered the forecast for its first quarter revenue citing weaker-than-expected demand and loss of market share to rivals notable Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

Intel in a statement predicted that the first quarter revenue would be $8.7 billion to $9.1 billion, compared with the $9.1 billion to $9.7 billion as announced in January this year.
Intel CEO Paul Otellini is having difficulty countering the rise of AMD, which is Intel’s biggest competitor. After being promoted as CEO following Craig Barrett’s retirement last May Otellini has struggled to keep Intel up with rival Advanced Micro’s new products.

Intel today said that the market share loss would be "slight" and the expenses for the first quarter will be lower than expected.

The stock which has already fallen 18% this year got a bitter beating as the shares of Intel dropped 42 cents (2.1%) to $20.07 on Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading.
AMD, which has seen a rise of 36% this year, rose 37 cents further to $41.70.
Even though Intel still dominates the market for chips, AMD’s share has seen a tremendous increase in its market share for chips to run PCs, which rose to 21% last quarter.

According to some analysts Intel is having inventory problems and has not been able o keep up with the demands.

February end Lenovo Group Ltd., announced that it has decided to run half of its PCs on AMD chips. In a similar move Google too might have switched to Advanced Micro from Intel for its servers.