英特尔又有啥大麻烦了

随着营收和运营收入的增长放缓，英特尔数据中心业务正面临新的威胁；2015年数据中心业务平台的销售价格上涨十分有限；如果企业购买继续爆冷，英特尔可能希望更深的切入ASP市场，而这一领域，博通和高通将是其最大威胁；考虑到芯片供应商的庞大数量，用户可能更愿意采用基于ARM的系统。

Summary

New threats to the Intel Data Center Group emerge as its revenues and operating income growth decelerate. The average selling prices on the Data Center Group platform have increased only minimally in 2015. Intel may want to cut the ASP deeper if enterprise buying remains cool and new competitors, Qualcomm and Broadcom, become threats. Customers may be more willing to adopt ARM-based systems from big cap chip makers.

Shares of Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) sold off in early January. Investors were reluctant to step back in after Gartner said the global outlook for PC shipments in 2016 is for a decline of 1% compared with 2015, with the potential for a soft recovery in late 2016. The PC market is still in the middle of structural change, which will reduce the PC installed base in the next few years, according to the Gartner report.

Notebook sales aren't doing so great either, according to Chris Danely of Citigroup, who downgraded the chip sector in February, citing that Taiwan notebook ODM shipments declined 38% month-over-month in January, below the three-year average of being down 14% on a month-to-month basis.

The good news for Intel might be that spending for data center systems is projected to grow 3% year-on-year, and the demand in this segment is expected to continue to be strong through 2016, according to Gartner. Intel's investors are hoping for a revenue rebound in its lucrative Data Center Group, DCG, which makes microprocessors, chipsets and SoC that are used in servers, storage and switches to power data centers. In the fourth-quarter 2015, the company said DCG revenue grew just 5.3% year-on-year, compared to a 25.4% clip during the same quarter in 2014. Most analysts had expected previous double-digit percentage gains to continue.

Revenues and operating income growth from the Data Center Group, which accounted for 28.86% and 15.53% of total revenue and operating income in 2015, are decelerating. From Intel's earnings statements, the DCG revenue grew 11.05% in 2015, compared to 18.3% in 2014, while the operating income grew only 6.14% in 2015, compared to the explosive growth of 30.17% in 2014.

Notably, the average selling prices, ASPs, on the DCG platform increased just 3% in 2015, compared to a 10% increase in 2014, while the unit volume growth was 8% in 2015, as it was in 2014. In fact, the ASP during the fourth-quarter 2015 was down 1% compared to the third-quarter 2015, and to the same quarter in 2014. Intel may want to cut the ASP deeper if enterprise buying remains cool and new competitors begin to emerge, as they try to maintain the high single digit growth.

Data Center Chip Race Gets Crowded

Early in January, Annapurna Labs, Ltd., an Israeli chip designer that Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) bought for between $350 and $375 million last year, sent out a press release saying it will start rolling out a new line of ARM-based chips called Alpine, which can run WiFi routers, power connected devices, and handle networking and storage functions for data centers. The chips will be sold to makers of products for homes and data centers.

Here is what Intel Senior Vice President General Manager, Data Center Group, Diane Bryant told Business Insider:

When you have 97% share of the market, you're always looking for where the competit