No. 1 chip maker expects revenue to rise 15%, set to unveil high-definition chip.
February 24, 2004: 6:47 AM EST
TOKYO (Reuters) - Intel Corp. said Tuesday it expects its revenue growth this year to mirror an estimated 15 percent sales gain for the entire chip industry.
It also unveiled details of its push into consumer electronics.
A 15 percent revenue gain for the January-March period would fall near the middle of Intel's forecast, made last month, for quarterly sales to be in a range of $7.9 billion to $8.5 billion, versus sales of $7.16 billion in the same period last year.
That range would mark growth of between 10 and 19 percent for the world's largest chip maker, but it is expected to narrow that range when it announces a mid-quarter business update on March 4.
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An Intel (INTC: Research, Estimates) spokesman clarified remarks made by Chief Executive Craig Barrett in an interview with Japanese business daily Nihon Keiza, published Tuesday.
"Mr. Barrett said he expected sales in the industry to grow about 15 percent and Intel to move in line with that. Of course, our goal is to exceed the industry average," said the spokesman, Masatoshi Mizuno.
Barrett made no comments on Intel's revenue outlook later Tuesday at a news conference in Tokyo about digital technology in the home.
Intel plans to move into the living room with liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) chips, a hybrid technology using both silicon microchips and liquid crystal displays (LCDs), for high-definition televisions.
Intel, based in Santa Clara, Calif., has said its chips can slash the price of a 50-inch projection TV to $1,800 by next year, compared with $3,000 to $4,000 for a standard microprojection television.
Barrett said he aimed to start production of LCoS chips by later this year and put them in televisions by early 2005.
"In terms of the revenue from that chip, I think it would be very small by our total revenue standards, probably no more than in the hundred million dollar range in the first year or so," Barrett said.
The chip maker must first overcome the advantage held by digital light processing (DLP) chips, developed by Texas Instruments Inc. (TXN: Research, Estimates) and used in projection televisions sold by Gateway Inc. (GTW: Research, Estimates), Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd and Mitsubishi Electric Corp.
DLP chips use over a million mirrors to reflect light in particular patterns and project images onto screens.
Intel's vision of a networked home linking PCs wirelessly with consumer electronics would allow users to store video on a computer but watch it on a television in another room.
"The PC...is an integral part of the digital home, but a Sony representative may say the TV is the central part of the digital home," Barrett said.
Sony Corp. (SNE: Research, Estimates), IBM Corp. (IBM: Research, Estimates) and Toshiba Corp. are developing a microprocessor codenamed "cell," a high-powered microchip that the companies aim to make the global standard for consumer electronics in the high-speed Internet era. Tokyo-based Sony aims to make the television the center of a networked home with "cell" chips powering electronics products to be home servers.
The widely anticipated "cell" is expected to power Sony's PlayStation 3. Test production for the chip is expected to begin in early 2005.
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