Intel's fifth chief
Published: 12 Aug 2004 12:00 BST
What do you think of the Wintel alliance? We know how successful it has helped make both Microsoft and Intel. That is changing. Microsoft has not succeeded as well as it could have, when venturing out of that comfort zone; nor has Intel.
I do not think anyone at Intel ever talked about the Wintel alliance. You never heard us use those words proactively. What we have talked about is what we do with Microsoft, what the partnership is and so forth.
From the numbers we have seen, Windows XP only has about 40 percent to 45 percent penetration. Many people are still on Windows 95 and 98, for that matter. What is going to be on the application software that would be enough incentive for the user to say, "ah, there is a dual core there, so I should go make the switch"? Well, I think you need to ask Microsoft about the penetration rate, but certainly, all new machines are shipping with XP. With consumers, I think it makes sense because of the better user features.
In business, I think that the SP2 release is compelling enough in and of itself to ask corporations to change. I think that is it is something that addresses one of the biggest pains that all of us who have IT shops have to deal with -- which is viruses. As I understand it, this will significantly reduce the most common approaches to virus propagation.
We have been adding architectural features and rolling them out. What going to dual core gives us is a better use of how to deliver power per watt... Going to 6, 7, 8, 9 gigahertz would have taken 200-watt processors and large die. So now, we can use that same die area at a lower frequency to get more net performance out of the machine.
Intel has expanded its operations overseas to the point where it derives more revenue from international than it does from domestic sales. But what does Intel have to do to succeed in the emerging markets of the third world?
There is no one recipe that works for everything. With the exception of places like Israel, where we were in there before there was a market, the pattern has traditionally been that you enter a market with a sales and marketing presence and create brand presence. Those kinds of things help create enthusiasm for PCs.
You can tap into local experience. Increasingly, it allows us to tailor products for local markets. In some countries of the world, the availability of talent and our cost are compelling arguments. There are different investments in different countries for different reasons, each of which was unique to the assets that the country happened to offer.
Are Intel's investment decisions overseas at all impacted by the level of cooperation or frustration with the governments in a particular region? For instance, you had a recent spat with China over Wi-Fi.
On the contrary. I think that our 12-year working relationship with the Chinese government and our willingness to help invest in its local industries and build some of Chinese companies up gave us the opportunity to get into a dialogue with China and change the current direction.
If we hadn't had that kind of presence, we wouldn't have had the ability to say, "listen, here is really what the world standards are about, and here's why they are important not just to you as a country, but to you as an exporter of a product." We would not have gotten where we did. They would have simply said, "this is the rule."
The fact that the Chinese were willing to change, I think, was remarkable. It was testimony to the fact that we were able to get access and talk to people in an intelligent fashion.
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