John A Antone, vice president of the Sales and Marketing Group and general manager for Intel Corporation in Asia-Pacific, recently spoke with DigiTimes about the company's promotion of low-cost small form factor PCs and its Classmate PC for the emerging and education markets in the Asia-Pacific region.
Q: How have Intel's product lines done recently? Does Intel have any special plans in 2007?
A: The year 2006 was a difficult year with sales performance for our mobile platform not meeting expectations, however, the company believes the worst has passed with dual-core processors becoming mainstream and more quad-core processor offerings to be added in 2007.
In addition to the launch of our Bearlake chipsets scheduled in June, quad-core processor support will also be added for the current P965 and G965 chipsets. The 915 and 965 chipsets maybe took too long to reach a mainstream price in the past, but Intel will continue to launch products with better performance and pricing for the channel market.
With 45nm products being launched in the later half of this year, Intel will have the most complete product lines and fastest product upgrades in 2007.
Q: Intel is recently pushing low-cost PCs for the entry-level and emerging markets, how is the action helping Intel to gain the upper hand in the low-cost PC market?
A: We have always paid careful attention to emerging markets. For example, we have been planning for India for 10 years already and more than 20 years for Malaysia and the Philippines. Currently, we estimate there are around 45 million low-cost PC users in China and the number is still growing. On one hand, we pay attention to the high-end market, but we also pay attention to the entry-level market.
Currently, we focus on government bids in the Asia-Pacific market and also cooperate with Taiwan-based ODMs to mass-produce low-cost PCs priced below US$299. We also are working with Microsoft for the operating system in the emerging and educational markets in Asia-Pacific.
Q: How are Intel's quad-core processors selling in Asia-Pacific?
A: Quad-core processors are still considered high-end products, which sell well to gamers. For example, sales in Korea are better than expected and quad-core processors have become standard gaming gear in Singapore. Quad-core processors were launched at the end of 2006, and countries with slow sales back then are currently showing improvement.
Though a US$1,500 quad-core desktop PC is still considered too expensive for emerging markets in Asia, it is acceptable in mature markets, so we won't be targeting our quad-core processor products at emerging markets.
Q: What is the biggest advantage of Intel's low-cost PCs?
A: Intel insists to provide the best products that fit within people's economic means. A low cost also gives Intel's products an advantage in the channel. With 45nm processors predicted to launch in 2007 and 32nm processors expected within the next two years, there will be more products appearing in the market.
With Intel going from 65nm to 32nm processing, it will increase the volume of the chips produced and lower costs accordingly, which means Intel's future products will have a low price not because of price cuts, but because Intel's advantage in production technology allows us to give the cost benefits directly back to consumers.
This interview was translated from Chinese.
John A Antone, vice president of the Sales and Marketing Group and general manager for Intel Corporation in Asia-Pacific
Photo: Company
Article translated by Joseph Tsai and edited by Eric Mah
