The worry over Intel Corp is that gross margins fell to 58% in the first quarter from 61% in the final quarter of last year, and there are concerns that the only way the company can make good its advantage over its upstart interlopers nipping at its heels is to continue with this will hurt you more than it hurts me price cuts; there was also price erosion in Flash memory chips, which are suffering from the failure of intelligent portable devices to take off as fast as had been forecast; Intel said only that shipments of its glaship Pentium rose substantially in the period; the company is also seeing growing demand for OEM boards and systems as manufacturers try to shorten lead times by buying in much of their Pentium systems ready made up by Intel rather than buying chips.
