Intel Tries to Secure Its Footing Beyond PCs
For the last several months, Andy Bryant, the chairman of Intel, has been trying to put steel in the backs of the company’s employees. At meetings, he tells them that Intel must fundamentally change even though the computer chip maker still has what it takes to succeed in engineering and manufacturing.
It is an extraordinary message at a company with the fiercely confident unofficial motto, “Only the paranoid survive.” Intel now finds itself faced with a fundamental question: Can the paranoid also evolve?
Intel became the world’s largest semiconductor maker through a partnership with Microsoft that dominated the personal computer business for a quarter-century. PC sales are now collapsing, as users are relying more on mobile phones and tablets that rarely contain Intel chips. Intel’s other mainstay business, chips for computer servers, is also changing. Cloud computing is creating huge demand for basic servers, but its simpler and cheaper designs may drive down prices and profit margins and offer openings to new competitors.
