lt cap,

I believe the street/brokerages over-estimated INTC's problems in the last go-round of publicizing these concerns, which started with, I'm guessing a year or more ago, not only weak PC demand, but the nasty-looking fact that INTC had spent $1bln on initiatives to gain a foothold, and then market share, in subsectors such as phones and tablets, and so far had achieved $1mln in revs from those initiatives.

I had a mental 'note' to myself to seriously think about once again opening a position if it reached $30/sh. The 'problem signs' cited in the article are more substantive and likely accurate than the last time around, I think. Intel is experiencing unexpected delays in their next die-shrink, which gives competitors like TSMC  time to catch up and perhaps pass them, a critical advantage that INTC has always enjoyed. And while INTC has historically, and wisely I think, limited the problem of idle fabs by producing chips for other companies, one can only be so nimble and switching production around, particularly when they thought they'd be a lot closer to successful nm shrink by now, and have the need of their fab resources. And while, as Jon pointed out long ago, tablets and phones really can't replace PCs (or Macs) for productivity, the upcoming generations often never owned pc's, so the pc-centric world has certainly changed. (Well, not totally - but laptops often seem to be substituted for desktop pcs where viable.) And being joined at the hip in terms of being 'tied' to partners like MSFT is pretty bad news in my book. I could rant on about the idiocy of MSFT, but suffice it to say that it is the only OS company still charging $ for their OS.  Along with MSFT producing products no one really wants but may be 'forced' to have, isn't helpful. (And charging customers *again* for a 'patch' for fixing their bug-infested 'beta' OS - e.g., Vista to Win 7) is just piracy. 

I'm not convinced INTC's problems are as great, over the longer term. as keeps being reported by brokerages and analysts. But I believe they're serious enough for me not to buy in here. If they sink lower, and as the dividend (now 3.17) grows (I think dividends are not an issue here), I probably will revisit the idea of again initiating a position. It is a shame that, in the past, when INTC catches a cold, AMD catches Ebola, no longer really matters. AMD may disappear, and the benefit to INTC is just no longer very significant, IMO.

I tend to think that INTC managed earnings masterfully over the past two years, i.e. set expectations low, exercized tough and strict cost controls, kept a lid on inventories and had enough sales momentum to last this long without a hic up, but the company's growth has slowed down meaningfully nevertheless.  Unless a new growth cycle starts, which in my view is quite unlikely for the mid term, I think it gets a bit tougher to get the street to continue to play the managed expectations game.   But since I have been wrong on INTC for so long .... 

That said, INTC may be a buy sometime this year, the stock has pulled back a decent amount already and if it drops further, say to the mid 20s, it would look quite attractive.