X-bit labs

Intel Gets Ready to Leap Ahead.

Category: Other

by Anton Shilov

[ 01/02/2006 | 12:08 PM ]

Intel Corp. Is going to release its new processors and products at the forthcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES), but in addition to that it will, as expected, change its logotype and introduce “Leap Ahead” motto that is meant to convince customers in the leadership of technologies, products and platforms promoted by Intel.

Several sources around the Internet reported that from early 2006 Intel will adopt a new logotype as well as add “Leap Ahead” motto, a move which the media attributes to be a decision of Intel’s new marketing chief Eric Kim, who joined Intel Corp. in late 2004. Prior to joining Intel, Mr. Kim was an executive vice president at Samsung Electronics, where he was responsible for global marketing and new business development and helped make Samsung a leading worldwide consumer brand. Years after promoting the motto “Leading the Digital Convergence Revolution”, Mr. Kim is at Intel and reportedly wants to dump the Pentium and Intel Inside brands in an attempt to redefine the attitude towards Intel Corp. by the consumers.

When founded in 1969, Intel was a maker of memory and logic chips and needed no identification among the general public. Years later after recognizing the potential of personal computers (PCs) the company started to focus on microprocessors for PCs and quickly found that there are loads of companies manufacturing chips for similar applications following Intel. By the late eighties Intel knew that its needs recognition among PC users and created “Intel Inside” trademark to differ itself from smaller chipmakers like Advanced Micro Devices, Cyrix, National Semiconductor and so on.

37 years later after the foundation the company from Santa Clara, California is the world’s largest chipmaker whose main advantages are ability to develop products – processors and core-logic chips – that can address different markets as well as ability to manufacture them in commercial quantities. No one in the industry has similar synergy of capabilities: microprocessor maker AMD can create efficient processor architectures, but always runs into problems when it comes to volume manufacturing, whereas the world’s largest maker of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) Samsung Electronics has foundries to make the chips, but does not have engineers to develop processors like those from AMD or Intel.

But while Intel seems to have some advantages, it should think about the future and consider such things like fab utilization and further growth opportunities for profits and revenue. It is not a secret that a state-of-the-art fab should run fully utilized to remain profitable, but the demand for microprocessors in the PC space is limited, while the requirements of other types electronics – consumer, medical, etc. – have risen and those markets seem to be much larger compared to the market of PCs. Intel now wants to address them to sustain its growth.

The new corporate motto from Intel does the opposite of what “Intel Inside” did: the “Intel Inside” brand told customers to be confident with the fact that an Intel processor is inside, the “Leap Ahead” motto should say that Intel is everywhere and leaps the technology forward, something which should transform the company into a technology provider recognized by consumers not interested in technology.

In order to convince consumers and decision makers to adopt Intel-based products, Intel will have to add emotions to its brand: people better recognize Sony or Panasonic, products from whom they can touch and use, than Intel, when using a machine built by Dell with plethora of components in addition to a few chips by Intel inside.

In order to encourage customers in acquiring Intel-based TV sets or personal computers designed for living rooms, Intel will not only run a typical ad campaign, but to offer customers a unique set of features they would get: for instance, with Intel Viiv PCs the developer will provide certain capabilities in terms of acquiring content and so on. The outcome will be that Intel will no longer be only a maker of chips, but a provider of real products that can be used and enjoyed, a significant transformation for the company.