Intel says it's positioned for the coming economic storm

Executives were asked, how does this current economic storm compare with the "dot-com bust" of 2001?

"Who knows what '09 is going to be, but I do think that there are some things that look like they are different," responded Otellini. "For one thing, this is not a post-dot-com kind of downturn. One of the things I recall vividly in that one was that people stopped buying computers, principally because there were so many available on eBay from companies that melted down. That skewed demand in '99 [through] '01 as a result." (Otellini was executive vice president of Intel's Architecture Group in 2001 under then-CEO Craig Barrett.)
This time around, Otellini pointed out, there's one big market that could save businesses like Intel that wasn't really there in 2001.

"We've had continued strength in emerging markets, including this last quarter. China rebounded nicely after the earthquake, and again after the Olympics. China is on track to become our largest market in a reasonable amount of time, and I don't see that changing. The emerging market pattern of more people coming into computing every day. It's different now in terms of the dynamic we have than any of those prior down periods...principally because the cost of computing has come down so much relative to [consumers'] income levels."

"I think we all had some worries about the third quarter," said Otellini later during the conference call, "not just because of the Olympics but because of the Chengdu earthquake; and it bounced back from both of those, and continues to be a strong driver of demand across all segments -- notebooks, desktops, servers, and consumer. So that one is a good geography for us. If you look at the geographies that sort of outperform seasonality for us in Q3, it's Asia/Pacific -- principally China -- and Japan, which is principally notebooks."

What contributed very strongly to Intel's growth in Q3 prior to the storm -- and even during -- is the Atom processor. Now that OEMs have found what could be the right form factor and price point, sales of Atoms going into netbook computers is far higher than even Intel predicted. But because Intel did anticipate the need to ramp up Atom production faster, it's been able to meet that demand.

"The whole point of Atom is to set new price points and bring this technology [to market]," said CFO Smith. "So if we're successful with that product, you're going to see the average ASP [selling point] coming down." That broadens the company's margins -- which even with the downturn, are expected to remain high full-year at 57% -- and that puts Intel in a healthier earning position against AMD.

And oh yes, about AMD...Will Intel's competitive strategy change now that AMD has implemented what had been considered the remedy for a worst-case scenario?

"From our perspective, nothing has changed," said Otellini. You still have someone that has to invest in capital at one end of the food chain, has to put [capital expenditures] into the ground and build factories and develop technology, and then optimize that to products and get a return on that capital, and then build on those products and now sell it to someone else for some price, who then sells it to the end customer. So the food chain really hasn't changed in terms of the ecosystem, except that there's one more person perhaps looking for a return in the equation."

Still, that gave the new CFO a chance to rub it in a little bit. "When we look at our business, that integration of design and manufacturing is one of our core assets, and the fact that we tend to be a generation-plus ahead of the industry is absolutely key," said Stacy Smith.

AMD's travails are being blamed in part on the tightening of the world credit market, which made it less feasible for that company to obtain the spending money it needed to modernize its foundries and build new ones, in its original timeframe. It's an indicator of how bad things can be.

So if Intel had to guess whether IT budgets for 2009 would be up or down next year, which direction would Intel go, asked one analyst. Borrowing a decisive answer from vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, Paul Otellini responded, "Yes."