It is suddenly being recognized in investment circles that Intel Corp has become just as much a monopoly vendor as Microsoft Corp, and that, far from being valued as a flaky and somewhat unreliable chipmaker, it should be valued as a monopoly vendor in one of the most lucrative markets in the world. According to Reuter, the changed perception, coupled with the recognition that it will have benefitted from last quarter’s wave of computer purchases by businesses large and small, and the fact that there is a whole string of desirable products for the consumer market that have been held back to this quarter, Intel’s best days are seen as being still to come – such a pity that IBM Corp so carelessly sold its 22%-odd stake for song in the mid-1980s. Two things are happening in the personal computer market that have not happened in a long time, Robertson, Stephens analyst Dan Niles told the news wire. You’ve got a major corporate upgrade going on and you’ve got a heck of a lot of stuff coming out in the consumer market, that will drive consumer buying. With devices such as digital video disk drives and multimedia machines driven by the forthcoming MMX Pentium chips due to hit the high street this quarter or next, many analysts are forecasting that Intel’s share price, which has doubled since June, could hit $200 sometime this year from its present $132 or so. As the dominant microprocessor supplier, it avoided the worst of the inventory glut that hit the industry in 1996 since it does not have to worry about competition.
