SWOT Analysis of Intel Corporation

Strengths: The Intel Corporation is the largest producer of computer processors and motherboards in the world. Holding 80% of the market share in the private, public and military sectors, Intel has been well rooted in the computing industry since it's inception 46 years ago. (Reuters) One of Intel's biggest strengths is it's high commitment to research and development. Intel has acquired many software and hardware companies over the past decade. These have boosted Intel's technological reach, allowing them to enter more into the software side of computing and expanding AI and user interface capabilities (TechCrunch). With a third quarter revenue of $14.6 billion, Intel owes some of it's growth to it's newly developed and acquired mobile phone markets.(Intel) With the world of computing technology being ever changing, Intel has stayed on top of it's competition as it reduces the size of its chips, to fit the smaller devices of today, without sacrificing the growing power of it's processors. Their in house manufacturing is also a great advantage, without having to pay another company to produce their chips. Intel is also a praised company when it comes diversity. With Intel's diversity initiative, it has many employee diversity groups based on race, nationality, religion and sexual identity. (Intel) In 1994, Intel was even one of the first companies to start a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employee group. Intel has received very high scores from organizations that fight for equality in the workplace.
Weaknesses:
One of Intel's biggest strengths, is also one of it's weaknesses. The sheer size of the company that allows it to maintain it's market leadership, also in some ways hinders it's growth. Although a diversified company, having the largest PC chip set market share has not significantly helped Intel's profits in recent years as the demand for smaller devices takes hold. Although the long standing relationship between Microsoft and Intel has bolstered market share well above even it's largest competitor, AMD, smaller companies that are more flexible have allowed them to ride the wave of growth in small mobile devices. The mobile market demands processors that are very power efficient, since battery technology hasn't grown to the level that processor speed has. Intel has always focused on a price and power, but competition has limited Intel’s mobile market because of the more energy efficient processors that they have created. Some of these companies, such as British based ARM are doing well in European markets where the business model appreciates innovation and ingenuity over full scale growth and profits.(Forbes) The favor of smaller devices over full size PC's has put a hit in Intel's profits, having affected past quarters revenues.
Opportunities:
Intel is a vast company, with many areas in which it operates aside from the standard PC market. Although only more recently getting into the mobile market, Intel is gaining momentum to have more manufacturers use its products in their small devices. The New York Times has recently reported that Intel has invested $1.5 billion into a Chinese semi-conductor company. This will allow them to make powerful Intel based chips for use in lower cost phones in emerging markets like China and India. (New York Times) Data centers, such as those created and used by Google, are still a growing opportunity for Intel. Intel provides most of the processors for that hardware, and date centers are expected to grow twice as fast in the next five years as they have in the last ten. (DividendMonk) Although Intel has been slow to start in getting into the mobile market, it's processors that grow in power and shrink in size are a natural fit for these small devices. According to Barron's magazine, as reported by Reuters, Intel is slated to grow 30 percent in the next two years. This is undoubtedly because of it's continued commitment to research and development, and continued push into new markets. Intel is prime to take the mobile market by storm, as more efficient designs promise a better fit for pocket sized computers.(Reuters)
Threats:
As mentioned earlier smaller companies like ARM Holdings, which license designs to companies such as Qualcomm and Texas Instruments for production. These compact, powerful and efficient designs have allowed them to gather a large advantage over Intel in the growing mobile world of computing. Although Intel has designs on the table that will be able to compete, the companies late start to the mobile game has hampered it's progress. If production and sales of these new units aren't sped up, it will take longer and longer for them to become a significant force in the new markets. Intel's saturation in the shrinking PC market is going to prove that it's once reliable source of income is reducing in size. ARM Holdings has also talked about using its technologies to make a jump into the lower end PC market, which would take even more away from Intel. (DividendMonk)
Conclusion:
As it stands right now, even with the more recent upheavals in the computer market with the introduction of mobile platforms, Intel is on very solid ground. They still hold have a processor in 4 of 5 PC's ever made, and although that market is shrinking, it is still their bread and butter. Every imaginable device is getting a powerful processor these days, from cars to televisions to refrigerators. With all of these factors in, Intel still saw 5% growth from last quarter to this one. (Intel)
For Intel to not continue to be a major player in the computing game, it would require a competitor to come up with some amazing and revolutionary technology. It's competitors are without a doubt working on such achievements. However, with Intel investing the highest percentage of its vast profits into research and development and also using some of the brightest minds from around the globe, it is very likely that they will be the ones continuing to be on the forefront of innovation. Now if Intel can make their small processors more energy efficient, they will dominate in all the markets, and afford the consumer the best performance money can buy.

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