Intel Corporation Leaves Behind its 'Tick-Tock' Approach

The technology giant is moving towards a new three-step development strategy and moving away from its previous, more successful Tick-Tick Strategy.

Intel Corporation’s ‘Tick-Tock’ strategy has dominated the market for over a decade now despite the fact that during this time period, the technology giant has worked on a number of different chip development methodologies. However, recently the chip maker has decided to say farewell to its ‘tick-tock’ strategy that has always seemed to work for it.

The era of relying on the ‘Tick-tock’ strategy is officially over as the technology organization is moving towards a three step development process which is called Process Architecture Optimization (PAO). This latest shift by the company didn’t come as a surprise to many since last year the company had stated that it was having issues with its 10-nanometer technology because of which it failed to go into production which it had planned to do so initially by the end of the year.

The Tick-Tock strategy basically referred to nodes, in which the new process nodes were known as the ‘ticks’ while the new architectures that were built on these process nodes were known as ‘tocks’. However, in its 10-K filing, the company declared that strategy officially dead. Furthermore, the filing also stated some of company’s future plans which included the introduction of new product families by the chip manufacturing organization.

In the filing, the company mentioned the introduction of ‘Kaby Lake’ which will be the third 14 nanometer product and is expected to have key performance enhancements in comparison to the 6^th generation Intel Core Processor. In addition to that, they are also working on their next-generation process technology which will be a 10 nanometer manufacturing process technology.

Intel Corporation is quite optimistic about its latest development strategy – however it is still too soon to say whether this new strategy will be impactful and will be able to generate the kind of response the company is hoping for it. Furthermore, we are yet to find out if it will be as successful as the initial Tick-Tock Strategy.

On March 21, Intel Stock witnessed a decline of 2% in the pre-market trading as Bernstein downgraded the company’s stock to Underperform from an initial rating of Market Perform. Stacy Rasgon, analyst at Bernstein believes that since the tech organization has not shared its quarter’s results as yet, it might not be ‘out of the woods’ as yet. Furthermore, the analyst also predicts that since the company has failed to live up to its guidance for the first quarter of the current fiscal year and hence has not yet shared anything in the pre-announcement.

The tech giant is supposed to report its financial earnings for the three month period on March 31. The analysts at the Street are hoping for the company to report profit of 50 cents per share and have estimated revenue of $13.95 million.

Qualcomm Stock Growth

After having a bad 2015 the company's stock has finally been recovering

Last year, when the Qualcomm Inc.’s stock slumped down by horrendous 34% of its value then, many analysts showed doubt whether the chipmaker will ever be able to regain its position in the market. However, now, from the past four weeks the American chipmaker’s stock has undergone a considerate recovery of 20%.

The San Diego, California based organization came in the limelight at the Mobile World Congress 2016 where it showcased its most recent Qualcomm Snapdragon 820. A large number of smartphones were debuted by their manufacturers which had Qualcomm’s 820 processor installed in it. However, the smartphone which caught everybody’s attention was Samsung’s Galaxy S7 and S7 Plus. The event marked the cordial reception of the processor.

Earlier last year, the predecessor of 820, the Snapdragon 810 put the company into hot waters after below average performance. The processor heated the devices which made Samsung to withdraw from Qualcomm’s chips and it later installed its interiorly built chips in its Galaxy S6 series smartphones. The suspension of the business from one of the largest and the top most clients left the company in a bad position with its stock value instantly stuttered down.

Getting Samsung back for business has indeed created a positive opportunity for the chipmaker however for the company who happens to plan on widening its scope of operations, this isn’t everything. On Analyst Day recently, the company disclosed about a host of different chipsets which has been intended to cater to the need of multiple industry segments including wearable and communication hardware. Moreover, the company has recently planned on developing a mobile processor for mid-tier smartphone. Analysts will be looking out at this initiative as Qualcomm has only been developing top-tier smartphone processors.

It is noteworthy, however, that the company’s step inside the server chip market has been ensured by a lot of enthusiasm and determination. It is also very close of having Alphabet Inc.’s official backing on being their chief server chip supplier. If the semiconductor manufacturing organization successfully closed the deal with Alphabet Inc. then it will be the point of massive victory for it.

Moreover, the firm’s strategic partnerships, for the development of sever chips, with Chinese counterparts is likely to strengthen the position of the company in the chip market which currently has Intel’s strong dominance.

Bringing about few changes in its business model has already landed the company in positive results. Apart from astonishing success at the MWC, the company’s expansion plans has also significantly affected the stock performance of the company. Both the investors and analysts have generated high hopes from the company. Although the commencement of the year has been positive for the company however in order to retain its stock growth the company has to maintain its momentum.