Forrester CEO George Colony listed them last week:

• Intel's chips are primarily sold inside desktop and notebook PCs. IT spending is now spread out elsewhere, so that Intel is no longer one component of a Windows/Intel monopoly.
• Virtualization software, which runs many server environments simultaneously on one chip, has reduced the demand for Intel-based servers.
• Companies are laying off employees, not buying them new computers.

Competing with Apple on the iPod front seems like a Formula for Fail. My guess is Dell made an honest effort to develop an iPod competitor, then killed the expensive marketing campaign and production run after deciding that they'd built another Zune. Dell has also fallen behind on its downsized-laptop "netbooks", which have neither the power of a full-size notebook nor the portability of an iPhone.

Why bother? The biggest segment of the consumer electronics market is still standard-size notebook computers. Dell has fallen from No. 1 to No. 3 position in sales, but that's still a lot of sales. Instead of diluting the company's resources across smaller, trendier markets, it seems more sensible for Dell to refocus on its core product, the cheap-but-impressive PC. Hey, I'd buy one. (Photo by AP/Manish Swarup)

The WSJ recounts how Dell got from there to here:

Dell's plants are still regarded as efficient at churning out desktop PCs. But within the industry, company-owned factories aren't considered the least expensive way to produce laptops, which have been the main driver of growth lately and are complex and labor-intensive to assemble. Rivals such as Hewlett-Packard Co. years ago shifted to contract manufacturers — H-P builds less than half of its PCs in facilities it owns.

Contract manufacturers can generally produce computers more cheaply because their entire operations are narrowly focused on finding efficiencies in manufacturing, as opposed to large firms like Dell, which must also balance marketing and other considerations.

For many Dell notebooks, a contract manufacturer already partially builds each system in a plant in Asia. The half-built computers are then shipped to one of Dell's own plants where assembly is completed. Because each computer goes to two factories, Dell refers to the system as "two touch."

Selling factories could be a culmination of a plan Dell started last year to increase its reliance on contract manufacturers, something competitors did first. "A lot of companies are already on that model," said Mike Cannon, Dell's production chief, in an interview earlier this year. "We're playing catch-up there."

(Photo by AP/Manish Swarup)

not really. we're americans. we don't give a shit about that part of technology.

i mean look at advertising and how disproportionate ratio between intelligence and earnings. Sergey whines how we need to solve world problems by focusing on these new technologies (solar power, alternative energy, etc), however he creates a web browser so he knows more about consumer insight and makes more money off of advertising.

We're Americans and we put our mouth where our money is. Sure you can grow big balls and go make IC's, but look at Transmeta. Digg, eBay, Firefox, etc all really changed the world more than the whiners making chips. Sure they're smart, but who cares?

We've been focused too much on software and content, even though we know there's someone from SanDisk who just flipped their lid on the playa. Likewise, there must be some poor pacifist at PA Semi who, all too happy to get sold to Apple, learned they had to continue engineering chip fab designs for jets, subs and choppers. I mean, c'mon, AMD minions, can you come up with no good dirt on Intel executives? I yearn to hear the stories from the actual front lines of technology, and not from the front of the line at the British Bankers Club or 111 Minna. Do tell. (Photo by Marcin Wichary)

The first Android-loaded phone — the HTC dream, to run on the T-Mobile network — isn't due out until October. It's not certain that when that device does come out that Android will be much to look at. Ever since Google released its last software developement kit only to the first 50 winners of its Android Developer Challenge, the jealous rest of the third-party developers building apps for the OS continue to trash the system's prospects in the press.

By selling off its fab plants, it could hopefully turn around its $1 billion-plus losses. Tom's Hardware Guide spinoff TG Daily now cites "sources" — don't you hate those? I know I do — who claim the split is only weeks away. Here's what's really happening: The split is real. The "leaks" and "sources" are AMD's way of letting the market know what's up without formally committing to it in a statement.

When Apple bought PA Semi in the spring, we thought Steve Jobs was looking for leverage in his negotiations with Intel for more custom designs. If Apple really is going to go back to designing its own motherboards — as it did before the Intel switch — then Intel may have called Jobs's bluff. Not that that's a bad thing for PA Semi's designers — working on Mac circuitry seems more appealing than tending to Pentagon contracts, as they were doing before.

(Intel Outside image via Loren Petrich)

The new branding effort will solve a problem of AMD's own making; with the purchase of ATI, a graphics-chip company, AMD signaled that it was more interested in winning business from videogamers and other consumers. Intel, meanwhile, remained the safe choice for companies to buy; no purchasing executive would blink at approving an order for PCs with Intel inside.

For years, Ruiz tried to beat Intel on technical prowess alone — "multicore" chips, "hyperthreading," and so on. That worked for a while: People were so amazed that AMD, long an Intel copycat, was beating its rival, that they bought more chips, perhaps out of the sheer novelty of it all. That Ruiz is now thinking about how his chips are packaged and sold is wise. But late.

(Photoillustration via Hexus)