Intel 2009 Annual Report Download - page 32

Table of Contents
MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF
OPERATIONS (Continued)
Strategy
Our goal is to be the preeminent provider of semiconductor chips and platforms for the worldwide digital economy. As part of
our overall strategy to compete in each relevant market segment, we use our core competencies in the design and manufacture
of integrated circuits, as well as our financial resources, global presence, brand recognition, and software development. We
believe that we have the scale, capacity, and global reach to establish new technologies and respond to customers’ needs
quickly.
Some of our key focus areas are listed below:
We believe that the proliferation of the Internet, including user demand for premium content and rich media, drives the need
for greater performance in PCs and servers. Older PCs are increasingly incapable of handling the tasks that businesses and
individual consumers demand, such as streaming video, web conferencing, online gaming, and other memory-intensive
applications. As these tasks become even more demanding and require more computing power, we believe that businesses and
individual consumers will need and want to buy new PCs. We also believe that increased Internet traffic and the increasing use
of cloud computing, in which a group of linked servers provide a variety of applications and data to users over the Internet,
create a need for greater server infrastructure, including server products optimized for energy-efficient performance and
virtualization.
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• Customer Orientation. Our strategy focuses on developing our next generation of products based on the needs and
expectations of our customers. In turn, our products help enable the design and development of new form factors and
usage models for businesses and consumers. We offer platforms that incorporate various components designed and
configured to work together to provide an optimized computing solution compared to components that are used
separately.
•
Architecture and Platforms.
We are focusing on improved energy-efficient performance for computing and
communications systems and devices. Improved energy-efficient performance involves balancing improved
performance with lower power consumption. We continue to develop multi-core microprocessors with an increasing
number of cores, which enable improved multitasking and energy efficiency. In addition, to meet the demands of new
and evolving netbook, consumer electronics, and various embedded market segments, we offer and are continuing to
develop SoC products that are designed to provide improved performance due to higher integration, lower power
consumption, and smaller form factors.
• Silicon and Manufacturing Technology Leadership. Our strategy for developing microprocessors with improved
performance is to synchronize the introduction of a new microarchitecture with improvements in silicon process
technology. We plan to introduce a new microarchitecture approximately every two years and ramp the next generation
of silicon process technology in the intervening years. This coordinated schedule allows us to develop and introduce
new products based on a common microarchitecture quickly, without waiting for the next generation of silicon process
technology. We refer to this as our “tick-tock” technology development cadence. In keeping with this cadence, we
expect to introduce a new microarchitecture using our 32nm process technology in 2010.
• Strategic Investments. We make investments in companies around the world that we believe will generate financial
returns, further our strategic objectives, and support our key business initiatives. Our investments, including those
made through our Intel Capital program, generally focus on investing in companies and initiatives to stimulate growth
in the digital economy, create new business opportunities for Intel, and expand global markets for our products. Our
current investments primarily focus on the following areas: advancing flash memory products, enabling mobile
wireless devices, advancing the digital home, enhancing the digital enterprise, advancing high-performance
communications infrastructures, and developing the next generation of silicon process technologies.
•
Business Environment and Software.
We believe that we are well positioned in the technology industry to help drive
innovation, foster collaboration, and promote industry standards that will yield innovation and improved technologies
for users. We plan to continue to cultivate new businesses and work to encourage the industry to offer products that
take advantage of the latest market trends and usage models. We frequently participate in industry initiatives designed
to discuss and agree upon technical specifications and other aspects of technologies that could be adopted as standards
by standards-setting organizations. Through our Software and Services Group, we help enable and advance the
computing ecosystem by providing development tools and support to help software developers create software
applications and operating systems that take advantage of our platforms. Lastly, we believe that the software expertise
of our Wind River Software Group in the embedded and handheld market segments will expedite our growth strategy
in these market segments.