An investment firm claims that Intel's decision to revise its fourth quarter sales revenue downwards was not just due to the hard drive shortage caused by the flooding in Thailand, but due to a general lack of demand for Intel chips.
Nomura Equity Research believes that Intel's downgrade from $14.7 billion to $13.7 billion is due to “weak sell-through” caused by poor performance in the Chinese market, low overall demand compared to ARM chips, and low volumes of ultrabooks.

This contradicts Intel's statement on Monday that the $1 billion shortfall for the last three months of this year is primarily due to the lack of hard disk drives, which is causing an overall supply issue for the entire PC chain.

Nomura admitted that hard drive shortages are a concern, but it believes that the real issue has nothing to do with that. It was particularly critical of Intel's failure to compete with ARM, which it said delivers more power-efficient processors.

Nomura likewise cut its estimate of Intel's fourth quarter growth to $13.7 billion and also shaved off $3 billion from its estimated growth for 2012, which is now set at $53.4 billion, 0.4 billion below its estimate for 2011. This means that 2012 could see a decline in growth for Intel as it continues to struggle with falling demand and other external issues.

Source: EE Times


Read more: Investment firm claims Intel Q4 cut is not due to HDD shortage by VR-Zone.com