The head of Intel Corp. said at the company’s Intel Capital Summit that the semiconductor industry may not be able to fulfill the demand towards new products next year if the market grows in the range between 12% and 18% in 2010. According to Paul Otellini, the industry is not ready and short supplies are possible.

“The industry is not ready for this yet. One of the things I worry about is, will everybody's capacity be there in sufficient quantities to build it?” said the chief executive officer of the world’s largest maker of chips, reports Reuters news-agency.

It is not a surprise that Intel is worried about so-called “pinch points” in the PC production supply chain. The success of Intel’s own business depends on shipments of mainboards, graphics cards, hard drives, memory and other PC components and once computer makers run out of certain hardware parts, they stop manufacturing and may reduce of even stop orders to Intel.

It remains to be seen whether the global slowdown of IT economy will transform into new growth next year. If the demand improves dramatically, it will be interesting to see how large manufacturers will react on that.

Tags: Business, Semiconductor, Intel, AMD