本周四即將公布季報的Intel，股價創18個月新高；華爾街多空交戰，論見分歧。

We think new management is changing the nature of the company, and putting more focus on mobile. Intel is probably investing more money in mobile than the rest of the chip industry, combined, and we think eventually it can work out for the company the way the PC did.
- Bill Nygren of the Oak Mark Fund@CNBC’s “Smart Money: Half Time Report”


PC市場疲軟，依然不容樂觀。

We are modeling Intel PC Client Group (PCG, 65% of sales) revenue down 1% and MPU units up 1% qoq for Q4, and 9% decline in PCG in Q1 versus 7% and 6% decline in 2013 and 2012, respectively.
- Romit Shah of Nomura Equity Research


空方認為Intel賺慣了大錢，其以高附加價值的心態跨進foundry領域，注定難以衝量。同時，有量的行動處理器代工市場，Intel也會面臨自家SoC與客戶競爭的困境（品牌與代工？）

We would classify Intel’s current foundry efforts as “high value, low volume.” The business today is characterized by a lack of strategic overlap with Intel’s current business, and reflective of markets with very high prices (for instance, high-end FPGAs can and do sell for thousands of dollars apiece) suggesting plenty of profit pool to spread around, and allowing Intel to value-price these services. A move to “high volume” foundry has many other issues. Some are strategic in nature – most of the high volume leading edge space is, of course, mobile SoCs, and area where Intel is trying to build out their own business (and foundries competing with their customers typically don’t do all that well).
- Stacy Rasgon with Bernstein Research

Rasgon也不看好Intel自家SoC在行動市場的獲利前景，畢竟SoC單價相對低，唯有取得相當市占來大量銷售才能滿足Intel現有的獲利水平；如此，Intel的產品可不是有競爭力就行了，而是要『超有競爭力』，光靠製程優勢只怕還不夠。

Intel is undergoing the beginnings of a structural business model transition that carries significant risk. The bigger issue faced by Intel is PRICE. These new markets support an ASP that is about a fifth of what Intel earns on a mainstream notebook MPU today. This implies that Intel needs to sell ~5 chips into new smartphone and tablets markets to equal one PC (and of course, if PCs really are entering secular decline, they would have to sell even more). This implies a need to take an enormous amount of market share simply to move the needle. In order to do this, Intel will need products that aren’t just competitive, or a little bit better, than the competition. Intel will need to be massively better than anything else in the marketplace in order to even hope to gain this kind of traction. Attempting to do this will require continued high levels of investment in both capex and R&D, during a period in which their business model is shifting away from their core, pressuring shareholder returns. And the end game is not guaranteed – process advantages may not necessarily translate to these types of share gains.