Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs as PC Demand Plummets
By QUENTIN HARDY

SAN FRANCISCO — Intel, the world’s largest maker of semiconductors, said on Tuesday that it was laying off 12,000 people, about 11 percent of its work force, as it continues to reel from a long downturn in global demand for personal computers.

The company’s chief executive, Brian Krzanich, announced the layoffs as part of a larger corporate restructuring, which will result in a $1.2 billion charge. Intel also reported lower-than-expected first-quarter earnings and reduced its projected revenue for the year.

“Intel has been known as the PC company,” Mr. Krzanich said in an earnings call with Wall Street analysts. “It’s time to make this transition and push the company all the way over” to supplying chips for things like smartphones, cloud computing, sensors and other devices.

Intel’s restructuring is the latest evidence of how onetime tech bellwethers have had to navigate a rapid shift into the more flexible and dispersed tech world created by the combination of mobile computing devices connected to cloud computing systems. On Monday, for example, IBM reported lower profit and revenue, including a 22 percent drop in sales of computing hardware.

Microsoft, which will report its financial results on Thursday, has over the last several years changed its strategy from software in PCs toward computer servers, a mix that involves much more software rented over its giant cloud system. Dell, a big PC maker, took itself private in 2013. Hewlett-Packard divided into two companies last year, one focused on corporate computing and one that makes PCs and printers. Last September, HP announced about 30,000 layoffs.

At Intel, Mr. Krzanich became chief almost three years ago, and over much of that time he has talked about moving the company into new areas. More recently, top executives have left the company, and Mr. Krzanich has brought in executives from other companies. The new restructuring is intended to help Intel invest more heavily in its new segments, such as chips to power connected devices.

Yet Intel still gets 60 percent of its revenue from chips supplied to PCs, and its profit margins there are not as good as in data center chips, its other major business. The company’s other businesses have small profits, or else lose money.

That means PCs are still core to what Intel does. Most of the layoffs, along with things like consolidating facilities and cut projects, are expected to be inside the PC business. Employees who are affected by the restructuring will be notified in the next 60 days, the company said. The layoffs are the largest since 2006, when the company let go 10,500 employees.

Last week, Gartner reported that worldwide PC shipments in the first quarter were 64.8 million units, down 9.6 percent from a year ago.

“The hope was that PC demand, which has fallen for years, would be flat, and other segments would start filling in,” said Mark Hung, an analyst with Gartner. “This threw a monkey wrench into that.”

For the first quarter, Intel had net income of $2 billion, or 42 cents a share, and revenue of $13.7 billion. Wall Street analysts had projected that Intel would earn 47 cents a share on revenue of $13.8 billion, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

Revenue at the PC group fell 14 percent from the previous quarter, indicating Intel had to cut prices as demand fell.

Intel faces other potential stumbling blocks. The company is unique as much of the tech industry counts on it continually delivering chips with more transistors for the same money. The process, known as Moore’s Law after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, has generally happened in two-year intervals. The next generation of chips, however, is likely to arrive in two and a half years, or more, leading to fears that Moore’s Law is slowing.

Mr. Krzanich, who previously had played down the significance of his production schedule, took pains on Tuesday to say that Intel wanted to pick up its pace. “We are continuously striving to get back to two years,” he said.

Intel had better do so, Mr. Hung said. “Its competitors don’t seem to be slowing down,” he said. “They may get to the next generation of chips at the same time as Intel. That would be unheard-of.”

Besides cutting its operating expenses by $700 million this year through the restructuring, Intel may be seeking to sell different types of chips in combined ways for better efficiency and profit.

“We’re moving from a company that was at the center of the PC market to being a company at the center of cloud computing,” said Stacy Smith, Intel’s chief financial officer.

On Tuesday, Mr. Smith was named to run Intel’s sales, manufacturing and operations, another indication of how Intel needs to tighten its relationship with a few big cloud companies, like Amazon and Microsoft.

This would involve integrating the production and sale of things like chips for computer memory along with computer processors. The company also wants to build a business in connecting things like automobiles to cloud computing, and needs to build faster wireless computing technologies for that. Intel added that it would begin a search for a new chief financial officer.

英特爾全球大裁員 砍1.2萬人

個人電腦（PC）需求長期持續下滑，全球最大半導體公司英特爾（Intel）十九日宣布將在明年年中前於全球裁員一萬兩千人，為該公司歷來人數最多的一波裁員行動。

英特爾執行長科再奇（Brian Krzanich）表示，裁員決定雖很困難但絕對必要，既可降低成本，還可釋出資金，投資於成長中的部門。估計這波裁員可節省開支十二億美元（約台幣三百八十六億元）。

科再奇說：「大眾眼中英特爾是家個人電腦公司，公司轉型和翻轉的時機已至。」他指出，未來英特爾將聚焦於供應智慧手機、雲端運算、感應器和其他裝置的晶片。

英特爾這次重整約縮減百分之十一人力，是二○○六年宣布裁員一萬零五百人後，最大刀闊斧的一次。此外，英特爾公布本年度第一季獲利溫和成長百分之三至廿億美元，營收一百卅七億美元，略低於市場預估。公司的PC部門營收較前一季下跌百分之十四，因需求下滑，意謂英特爾可能被迫降價。

蘋果的iPad於二○一○年問世後，個人電腦銷售開始持續下跌。根據顧能公司（Gartner Inc.）統計，今年第一季PC出貨量比去年同期下滑百分之九點六。

紐約時報指出，英特爾大規模裁員，顯示這個個人電腦時代的晶片業霸主，也因科技趨勢迅速轉變面臨轉型問題。面對行動裝置與雲端運算系統結合的新科技世界，英特爾仍有六成營收來自個人電腦部門，毛利率正在下滑，而該公司其他部門獲利不多甚至出現虧損。

許多個人電腦時代的科技領頭羊公司，近年來都面臨業績下滑，必須進行裁員重整甚至分拆下市等狀況。IBM十八日公布的業績不如預期，電腦硬體銷售下滑百分之廿二；微軟過去幾年一直想邁入PC以外的領域，例如收購諾基亞開拓行動裝置市場，但成績似乎並不亮眼；PC大廠戴爾已在二○一三年下市；惠普去年分拆成兩家公司，去年九月還宣布將裁員約三萬人。

科再奇執掌英特爾已近三年，一再談到將轉移至其他新的領域。新的重整行動意在協助公司提高一些成長領域的投資，包括智慧家庭和「物聯網」等其他連結裝置，以及該公司的數據中心晶片和電腦記憶事業。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/20/technology/intel-earnings-job-cuts.html

2016-04-21．聯合報．A6．話題．編譯王麗娟