Intel CEO touts 'much improved' H1 '05 growth

Departing Intel CEO Craig Barrett has said he expects H1 2005 to yield better global sales figures that the first half of this year did, a forecast at odds with some market analysts.

Earlier this month, Barrett said he viewed the Semiconductor Industry Association's prediction that 2005 will see negligible growth or a slight decline over 2004 "with a pinch of salt".

This week he re-iterated that viewpoint during a visit to India. "I'm looking for our performance to be much improved in the first half of 2005 over what it was in the first half of 2004," he said, the Dow Jones Newswire reports.

H1 2004 saw the delayed release of Intel's 90nm Pentium 4 chip, 'Prescott', and, later in the half-year, the arrival of the 90nm Pentium M, 'Dothan'. H1 2005 will certainly see the arrival of 'Sonoma', the second generation of Intel's Centrino platform, not to mention the Pentium 4 6xx series, along with the first 90nm P4 Extreme Edition. If all these arrive as planned, Intel's H1 2005 will have a far better product portfolio than it did in H1 2004.

Indeed, according to Intel's head of mobile products, Anand Chandrasekher, speaking to The Register yesterday, the company is expecting more than 125 design wins to be announced alongside the Sonoma launch next quarter. Sources suggest the Sonoma launch will come sooner rather than later, with 17 January 2005 being offered for the platform's debut. ®

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