The outlook for Intel Corp’s microprocessors is strong, and only misconceptions are leading investors to believe the company’s dominant position supplying the personal market is threatened, president Andy Grove told the conference. Saying business around the world has never been better, Grove said he is puzzled by Intel’s steep stock market fall. There has been immense turbulence in our stock, Grove said. It has been immensely frustrating and puzzling to us. The gist of it is, Intel’s position have never been better, Grove said. He said Advanced Micro’s announcement it plans to ship hundreds of thousands of 80486 chips this year amounts to about one week of Intel’s total productive capacity, and as for the latter’s plans to line up a manufacturing partner to boost production in 1994, he said he doubts the company will find much excess capacity in the industry – and any company acting as a partner with Advanced Micro could face legal action, but he would not say what Intel might do. Grove said Motorola’s PowerPC chip will fit the niche workstation market without the mass appeal of Pentium because it does not immediately run Microsoft Corp software. Because of the raging personal computer price war, the European market started to expand strongly in 1992 and now the Japanese market, despite its general economic sluggishness, is also expanding.
