SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.--Now here's a gutsy call. A new study released today concludes that Intel Corp. should be able to maintain a dominant market share in the mobile PC processors market.
The processor leader should be able to do this despite rapidly growing competition from such companies as Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Transmeta Corp., and Via Technologies Inc., according to In-Stat/MDR, which is a Cahners research unit just formed by the merger of In-Stat and MicroDesign Resources.
But to solidify a leading position, Intel must successfully lower mobile Pentium III average selling prices, according to the research firm. Although the prices of desktop Pentium 4 and Pentium III processors have been slashed recently by up to 51%, mobile Pentium III prices are expected to deteriorate only slightly during 2001. And it will be the second half of next year before they are cut substantially, InStat/MDR predicted.
Intel's blended mobile processor ASP will decline by 20% from the fourth quarter of this year to the fourth quarter of 2002, the market researcher predicted. This will be due to increased competition and continued reliance on the P6 microarchitecture, it reported.
"Despite the present economic slowdown, we project that a cyclical recovery in the fourth quarter will allow Intel's mobile unit volume to grow 5% in 2001," said Kevin Krewell, In-Stat/MDR analyst. He projected that unit growth for mobile processors will return to a normal growth rate--back to 26%--in 2002. Making this happen will be pent-up demand and a migration to WindowsXP, he said.
Krewell didn't hold out much hope for the other vendors to eat into Intel's lead. "AMD, Transmeta, and Via Technologies will continue to nibble at Intel, offering slightly different combinations of performance, power, and price," he said. But considering that Intel's present mobile volume is roughly the same as AMD's total CPU shipments (including desktop), the alternative vendors have a long way to go to supplant Intel's sheer volume and manufacturing capacity," the market researcher maintained.
Intel's plans for the Banias mobile processor "could leave AMD out of the growth rate of the market, the In-Stat/MDR report concluded, even though the mobile Athlon 4 and the mobile Duron are high performing processors.
To help it maintain its lead, In-Stat/MDR expects Intel to have DDR SDRAM support in 2002 with the Brookdale chip set. And it expects the chip maker to add integrated graphics to a mobile Pentium 4 chip set in the second half of next year to support a lower-cost infrastructure.
