Intel blows away Wall Street and doubles earnings

I've said it before and I'll say it again: everyone harps on Microsoft fortheir deadlock on the software industry but no one--and I mean no one--canhold a candle to the monopoly and industry position currently enjoyed byIntel. The CPU giant blew analyst's expectations right out of the watertoday when it announced that its revenue for the quarter ending March 31rose to US$6.4 billion, up from $4.6 a year ago. It's earnings more thandoubled--yes, you read that right, doubled--from $894 million a year ago to $2 billion. Think about that for a second: this company made $2 billion in a single quarter.

In the official statement about the earnings, Intel's president and CEO Andy Grove said that 1997 would "be a year of major product transitions forIntel." He mentioned the May launch of the Pentium II processor, and noted that Intel's challenge, "as always, will be to add manufacturing capacity fast enough to supply all market segments."

In other words, their only problem is how they'll make enough chips to satisfy demand. Notice no mention was made of "competition." To Intel, there's no such thing