Intel on the offensive in the semiconductor industry

From their interview with Pat Gelsinger, the CEO of Intel, to comment on the latest quarterly results of the semiconductor maker, financial analysts may not have remembered above all the good results of the company. Admittedly the group achieved nearly 20 billion dollars (17 billion euros) of turnover, above forecasts, and raised its forecasts for the year to 73.5 billion dollars. But it is rather a few comments from the leader, who took over at the head of the company in February, that will have caught the attention.

First observation made by the leader: the shortage of semiconductors that has hit the world economy since the Covid-19 crisis could last until 2023, with a peak this summer. He is not the first to warn about this bad patch, but certainly the most pessimistic: before him, in May, Jean-Marc Chéry, the CEO of the Franco-Italian manufacturer of electronic components STMicroelectronics, predicted that the situation would be “Extremely tense” until the end of the year, before the start of regularization in the first half of 2022.

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Faced with an unprecedented influx of orders and the disruption of supply chains due to the pandemic, founders, even at full speed, were unable to meet the demands of all their customers, seizing up production chains many industries, from automotive to the smartphone market. If the augury of the boss of Intel comes true, the same players have concerns for the months to come.

“We just think the smaller players won’t be able to keep up,” Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO

Another comment slipped by Mr. Gelsinger, the time has come for market consolidation: in a sector where competition is raging, “We just think that the small players will not be able to keep up”, he assures, and that only the most advanced companies will be able to survive. Intel expects to be one of those in a $ 464 billion market in 2020, expected to grow 12.5% ​​in 2021 according to the firm IDC.

For his interlocutors, the analysis of the boss of Intel gives substance to the rumor that has been running for a few days that the American would be ready to spend $ 30 billion to get their hands on GlobalFoundries, owned by Mubadala, a sovereign fund of ‘Abu Dhabi. The operation would allow it to rapidly increase its production capacities – and not necessarily only for Intel but also for third parties, as are doing its main competitors, the Taiwanese TSMC and the Korean Samsung. This could in particular allow Intel to have factories in Europe since GlobalFoundries, born from the takeover of the industrial activity of the American AMD, its historical competitor, has a large unit in Dresden in Germany.

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