SWOT ANALYSIS

Intel
Strength:
As there are always reasons for any organization to be at the peak in the market for quite a long time so
do Intel.
To begin with, Intels loyalty towards its customers, and reputation in the global market is of very much
significance achieving a great name. A continuous commitment towards research and development has
helped Intel kept evolving and has come up with much needed innovations every time. To improve and be
innovative all the time, continuous spending of money is then required too. In 2013, Intel has spent $10.6
billion for Research and development to remain a competitor in the market.
Intels production in its own facilities has reduced the marketing and manufacturing time for its product.
Also, in-house manufacturing has substantially reduced the cost of new products.
Generally Intels dominancy in the market has always been very high which can be analyzed from the
acceptance of its every new product. Therefore, it can be said that Intel has large loyal base of customers,
and surely its a great strength to any organization.
Intel has always been backed up heavily by the strong finances. For any company, finance helps the
company to make improvements and bring new innovations while taking risks in making new products.
Strong, experienced, and skilled workforce has always been the key to success for Intel. Such great
employees who have always come up with the innovative ideas for the company are rare to find. (Adnan
Riaz 2016)
Weakness:
The current ongoing problem to Intel is the downside trend in the sales of PCs in the recent years, and
this is irreversible. Since this is unrepairable loss, and company cant do much about it so in order to
reduce this impact, it needs to expand and enter into new market sectors such as tablets and smartphones.
As these markets are quite different and they have different ways of working in the market, henceforth,
Intel has to be smart and bring about new technologies and keeping itself unique in terms of costs and
advancement.
Moreover, underuse of its capacity due to decrease in the sales of PCs, company could not develop new
products and has left a vacant space. Had Intel been manufacturing much more products in the past, they
would have overcome the loss and had been a money-spinning company.
In 2006, a new reform by Intel resulted in loss of jobs for about 10,500 employees. More precisely, about
10% of its workforce by the end of July 2006. (Adnan Riaz 2016)
Opportunities:
Products like, cellular industry, broadband, and security devices offer diversification to the market and so
the opportunity to Intel. Also, computer products are increasing, and this opens doors for Intel to bring
about new technologies and increase its manufacturing of products so does the sale and attain the success.
The weakness of Intel for underutilized capacity provides an opportunity for Intel to manufacture
different products, spending precious time and budget on innovations. Moreover, manufacturing for other

companies if have excess capacity to do so. This would signal the other companies that they have the
capability to make products and cope up in market.
Another segment of the current market that looks predominantly striking for Intel is its opportunity in the
Internet of Things market. At Intel's investor meeting which took place a year ago indicated that this
business unit captured about 17% market share of its served addressable market. As Intel has relatively
low share in a fairly large and growing market. However, It should be clear that Intel making significant
investments in this market. In late 2013, Intel CFO Stacy Smith said that investments in this segment
would increase by 20% relative to 2012 levels), it seems quite sensible to expect that Intel should be able
to gain share within what Intel claims is a growing total addressable market. (Ashraf Eassa 2016)
Threats:
Though server industry is dominated by Intel, but the threats from big giants like Google and Facebook
always is always there.
As Intel operates in many countries, and every country has its own environmental regulations and strict
Federal policies, making it hard for Intel to function at its best. Any violation of rule of Federal Policy in
any country would give Intel a bad name. Also, ups and downs in the current exchange causes Intels
financial performance to reduce.
IBM has turned into Intel's worst nightmare in a certain way. They have manufacturing deals with every
one of Intel's competitors causing Intel to think out of box and do more on its diversity and production to
be in the market as best as always. (Investopedia 2016)
AMD
Strength:
Managerial Hierarchy: In 2014, Lisa Su was appointed as CEO of the company. She has a 20-year
experience in semiconductor products with a Bachelors, Masters, and Doctorate degrees in electrical
engineering. Since she already had a huge experience in providing a promised products to the AMD at the
earlier position of Senior Vice President, Corporate director, and chief operating officer at AMD, which
will be vital for the future of the company, and organization will start gaining the rewards of her past
experience now.
Gaming: Sales in gaming consoler are rising worldwide and as predicted by the researcher, it will
continue to grow more and more in the future. Sales for PlayStation 4 have exceeded $40 million
consoles (Forbes 2016), and Xbox one has also been on top. This is great news for AMD because it is the
main supplier of semiconductor for this industry, thus clearly an indication for the sustainable growth of
AMD. (Arjun Kharpal 2016)
Costs: Falling production costs results in higher profits. The following graph shows the expenses of AMD
from 2014 to 2015. (AMD 2016)

Weakness:
Poor PC market: The global Pc market is collapsing and people are willing to buy other devices due to
complexity of window 8 and some other reasons. This decline will result in big loss to AMD as its growth
is highly dependent on supplying microchips to PCs. Following chart highlights the steady decline in the
computer industry. (Will Oremus 2016)

Poor Earning reports: Revenue for the third quarter of 2015 of $1.06 billion, and making up the
operating loss of $158 million, and net loss of $197 million or $0.25 per share which is quite huge. NonGAAP (1) operating loss was $97 million and non-GAAP (1) net loss was $136 million, or $0.17 per share.
GAAP and non-GAAP results include a $65 million inventory write-down and the impact of this charge

to loss per share was $0.08. (AMD report, 2015). As per the report, poor performance of AMD has been
noticed which proves a downward trend a company is facing.
Lack of Acquisition: The organization is buying small firms like Sea-Micro which was bought for a $335
million unlike previous firm like ATI which was brought for $5 billion. This lack of drive suggests the
poor performance of the management which may not be suitable for making up the relations with the
stakeholder. (Joel Hruska 2015)
Opportunities:
AMD is all set to launch Zen-based CPU this year. This latest technology will offer power efficiency and
improved performance to the current 32nm processors. This chip has the ability to become a new leader in
the server processor space and high end desktop. (Khalid Moammer 2016)
GPU Radeon Pro Duo is the new and exciting technology of virtual reality by AMD which is likely to
help game developers and creators to come up with virtual reality games. It is expected to be the most
powerful GPU in the market. As the market for virtual reality has been increasing and this is a great
opportunity for AMD to come and showcase its presence in this type of industry too. Its fascinating to
notice how AMD will handle this new business market, since a right experience of Virtual Reality (VR)
needs excellent immersive display controlled by an advanced GPU. (Khalid Moammer 2016)
Threats:
Intel has always remained on top and better than AMD due to its creative, unique and efficient design of
CPU units. Intels CPU design process large amount of data than the AMDs design. In 2015, Intel
boosted $11.4 billion of profit which is quite huge (Intel reports 2015). Intel huge and very constructive
market has always remained a threat for AMD.
IBM has been observed that it is gradually increasing its production in electronic markets. At the Open
Power summit last year, IBM demonstrated a new range of products. The event was a joint collaboration
between NVIDIA and IBM, thus sending world a signal of strong partnership between two firms, which
could be damaging to the current status of AMD. (Press release 2015)
Intel vs AMD:
It is very clear in the market that both Intel and AMD displays resemblance of having a brand name and a
great market share. Furthermore, both organizations features stable and strong financial status due to their
great marketing and business. Generally, Intel comparatively better than AMD in almost all of
departments, but it can never be said that AMD is not a great competitor to Intel, Indeed it is, and perhaps
the only one to Intel. The strong financial status and rivalry will empower them to produce and introduce
new technologies in the market, and also to spend more on research and development.

References:
Adnan Riaz 2016, Seekingalpha.com, viewed 31 October, 2016,
<http://seekingalpha.com/article/2235253-a-swot-analysis-of-intel>.
Investopedia 2015, "2 Big Threats to Intel's Most Profitable Business (ARMH, IBM)", Investopedia,
viewed 31 October, 2016, <http://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/041515/2-big-threats-intelsmost-profitable-business-armh-ibm-intc-amd-goog-googl-hpq-lnvgf-lnvgy-nvda.aspx>.
Will Oremus 2016, "The Real Reason No One's Buying PCs Anymore: They've Gotten Too Good", Slate
Magazine, viewed 31 October, 2016,
<http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/04/12/why_pc_sales_are_declining_old_pcs_still_work_j
ust_fine.html>.
AMD reports 2015, "News Release | Investor Relations | AMD", Ir.amd.com, viewed 31 October, 2016,
<http://ir.amd.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=74093&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2097673>.
Joel Hruska 2015, "AMD takes a beating in Q1, abandons SeaMicro, dense server business ExtremeTech", ExtremeTech, viewed 31 October, 2016, <http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/203590amd-takes-a-beating-in-q1-abandons-seamicro-dense-server-business>.
Khalid Moammer 2016, "AMD Zen 8 Core 95W Summit Ridge CPUs Launching In January 2016 Already Going Through Validation", WCCFtech, viewed 31 October, 2016, <http://wccftech.com/amdzen-cpu-8-core-summit-ridge-launching-january/>.\
Press release 2015, "Press Releases Archives - OpenPOWER", OpenPOWER, viewed 31 October, 2016,
<https://openpowerfoundation.org/category/press-releases/>.

Ashraf Eassa 2016, "Don't Be Ridiculous: Intel Corp.'s Internet of Things Strategy Is Working -The Motley Fool", The Motley Fool, viewed 31 October, 2016,
<http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/04/14/dont-be-ridiculous-intel-corps-internet-ofthings.aspx>.
Arjun Kharpal 2016, "PlayStation VR goes on sale as Sony bets the headset will continue
momentum for the PS4", CNBC, viewed 31 October, 2016,
<http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/13/playstation-vr-goes-on-sale-as-sony-bets-the-headset-willcontinue-momentum-for-the-ps4.html>.