“We congratulate Enjoyor on its IPO and support the launch of the Growth Enterprise Market,” stated Intel Capital President and EVP Arvind Sodhani. “We see the emergence of a liquid and thriving domestic Chinese equity market such as GEM as critical and essential for growth and emergence of successful innovative technology companies in our portfolio like Enjoyor.”

Yesterday Enjoyor Technology Group went public on the China Growth Enterprise Market. Intel Capital’s investment was made about 8 months ago. Intel signed a 3 year business collaboration deal as part of the investment. Enjoyor is helping Intel push their Atom processors in the areas of digital health-care in China too.

Intel Capital put in about $7.5 billion in companies since 1991. The $7.5 billion were spread across about 1,000 companies in about 45 countries. Of those 1,000 companies, 168 have gone public and 212 have been acquired or merged.

One of Intel Corporation’s most recent advertisements features an Indian guy by the name of Ajay Bhatt strolling across the company floor, winking, and doing a “you’re the man” finger point. The theme of the ad was that “our rockstars are different from yours.” The Intel advertisement used an actor of Ajay Bhatt rather than the actual guy.
So Conan O’Brien came up with the idea of interviewing Bhatt himself as Intel is a sponsor of his show. The video is embedded above of Bhatt being interviewed. Spoiler: the best part is at the end.

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) CEO Paul Otellini announced yesterday at the IDF event in San Francisco, CA that netbooks powered by Atom processors will eventually have an application store. Intel itself is working on a framework that for clients to host and build applications. Otellini also announced the Intel Atom Developer Program. The applications will start to become available on netbooks, but then they will be ported over to other Atom-powered mobile Internet devices.

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC)’s top lawyer Bruce Sewell and SVP of Digital Enterprise both stepped down this week. The departures come off as a surprise to the company as Gelsinger was supposed to give a keynote speech at the Intel developer forum and Sewell lead the fight against the EU’s antitrust allegations.

Both Sewell and Gelsinger are joining other major corporation. EMC Corporation hired Gelsinger as the President and COO of information infrastructure products. Sewell is becoming the General Counsel and SVP of Apple Inc.

Since Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini is relatively new to the position, it was uncertain that Gelsinger would have a chance at becoming CEO of Intel. Gelsinger may have a better chance becoming CEO of EMC down the line. Suzan Miller, the Intel deputy general counsel will fill in for Sewell temporarily.

Daniel Cooperman, Apple’s General Counsel and SVP of Legal and Government Affairs is retiring at the end of September which opened up the position for Sewell. “We are thrilled to have Bruce join our executive team, and wish Dan a very happy retirement,” stated Apple CEO Steve Jobs in a press release. “With Bruce’s extensive experience in litigation, securities and intellectual property, we expect this to be a seamless transition.”

Intel Corporation has exceeded the Wall Street forecasts for the third quarter.  The reason why is because of strong demand for their chips.  This is good news for the economy considering Intel is the biggest chip company in the world.  This indicates the economy as a whole is strengthening in the tech sector.

Intel expects sales for the quarter to be roughly $8.8 billion to $9.2 billion.  Thomson Reuters analysts expected Intel’s Q3 revenues to be about $8.55 billion.  Intel themselves were surprised by their revenues because they expected the economic downtown to drastically affect business.

Dell, the second largest PC manufacturing company also expects to have a solid year.  “There are a lot of moving pieces in the PC industry as we prepare for a new operating system from Microsoft,” stated Doug Freedman, an analyst at Broadpoint AmTech in an interview with The New York Times.

Intel Corporation has acquired two companies in the last 30 days.  The two companies are Cilk and Rapidmind.  Both companies are small and employ less than 50 people.  Intel also acquired Wind River Systems this past June.

“Over the last few years, there has been a gradual emergence of multicore microprocessors. It’s put parallelism in more and more machines,” stated Intel Chief Evangelist and Director of Marketing and Sales James Reinders. “If you look at traditional applications, ones that we use everyday, it’s fair to say that most are not exploiting parallelism–at least not to the full extent.”

Cilk develops software called Cilk++ which are extensions to C++ that allows developers to create multithreaded applications and setup paths for multicore legacy applications.

RapidMind is a Waterloo, Canada based company that assists applications to work on multi-core processors.  Essentially this reduces the cost and time-line of application development.

Intel Corporation has been taking a bit of heat from the government lately, both domestic and abroad.  In May, the European Union fined Intel $1.45 billion over anti-competitive practices.  And two months ago Intel received a letter last week that PCs in Cuba contain Celeron processors even though there is an embargo.

Dealing with the European Union
Interestingly ombudsman P. Nikiforos Diamandouros criticized the EU for not recording the case file in the decision against the chipmaker.  And a Dell executive cited AMD’s performance being poor as the reason why the PC manufacturing company chose Intel as their supplier.  This makes the verdict of the decision to penalize Intel seem a bit off.  More details to follow as discussions arise on this topic.

Dealing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
The SEC sent Intel a confidential letter on June 4th stating the following:
“We are aware of a May 2008 news report that PCs in Cuba contain your Celeron processors. Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria are identified by the State Department as state sponsors of terrorism, and are subject to U.S. economic sanctions and export controls.”

In addition, the SEC wrote “We note that your Form 10-K does not include disclosure regarding contacts with Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria. Please describe to us the nature and extent of any past, current, and anticipated contacts with the referenced countries, whether through distributors, resellers, licensees, or other direct or indirect arrangements.”

The Cubans have PCs that have Intel Celeron processors with 80GB hard drives and 512MB of RAM.  They also have the Windows XP operating system.  Intel responded with the following letter:

“Intel has no business contacts with the Subject Countries, either directly or indirectly through tacit agreement with its customers. Intel does not provide products or technology to the Subject Countries….”

To be honest, perhaps it is a good thing that all the Celerons are ending up in Cuba.  They should even take computers marked with “dual-core” processors.  And let’s give the Americans more Core 2 Duos!

Intel reported $8 billion in 2Q revenue. The figure is up 12% from last quarter. Its earnings beat most forecasts. Intel’s CEO described the quarter to quarter earnings growth as the best since 1988. The earnings reflect an improvement in the tech sector.

Intel’s earnings were helped by strong sales of its ATOM netbook processor and its mobile notebook processor line. Intel sees chip demand strengthening in the second half of the year.

The company has $11.3 billion in cash.

Intel and Nokia Corporation have announced a partnership that focuses on developing a new Intel Architecture class for mobile computing.  The new platform will be used in future notebooks, netbooks, and mobile devices.

Both companies will partner on several open source mobile projects using the Linux operating system.  Through the partnership, Intel will also buy the Nokia HSPA/3G modem IP license for future products.

“This Intel and Nokia collaboration unites and focuses many of the brightest computing and communications minds in the world, and will ultimately deliver open and standards-based technologies, which history shows drive rapid innovation, adoption and consumer choice,” stated Intel SVP and General Manager Anand Chandrasekher, Intel Corporation. “With the convergence of the Internet and mobility as the team’s only barrier, I can only imagine the innovation that will come out of our unique relationship with Nokia. The possibilities are endless.”

[via Intel PR/TechMeme]

Elektrobit Corporation has recently demonstrated a mobile Internet device that will run on the Intel Moorestown mobile processor using the “Moblin v2 for MIDs” stack.  Intel will actually release the mobile processor sometime next year.  This means we won’t see the MID Reference Device hit the shelves until next year too.

The device itself is pretty small as it is just a half inch thick and has a 4 inch HD screen.  There is an HDMI port, WiMAX or 3G mobile broadband capabilities, and it is voice-powered.

[via Engadget/Elektrobit.com]

Intel Corporation has made a definitive agreement to buy out software firm Wind River Systems Inc.  Intel will buy out all of Wind River’s common stock at a price of $11.50 per share in cash which comes out to be a total of $884 million.

Wind River is one of the top software companies for embedded devices built in to automotive and aviation transportation.  Wind River builds software for mobile devices.

“This acquisition will bring us complementary, market-leading software assets and an incredibly talented group of people to help us continue to grow our embedded systems and mobile device capabilities,” stated Intel VP Renee James. “Wind River has thousands of customers in a wide range of markets, and now both companies will be better positioned to meet growth opportunities in these areas.”

[via Intel PR]

In less than a few days after Intel was fined for having unfair prices and for giving rebates to PC makers by the European Union, Nvidia decided to give their opinion on the chip maker company.  The European Union decided to investigate Intel after AMD filed a report against them.

Jen-Hsun Huang, the CEO of Nvidia said that Intel chip pricing was unfair but said that they are not planning to file an antitrust action lawsuit against Intel for now.  Intel sells Atom chips for $45 for a single unit, but sells three-chip sets for $25.  The extremely discounted price for bulk units lures customers away from AMD.  “That seems pretty unfair,” stated Huang. “We ought to be able to compete and serve that market.”

“We compete fairly. We do not force bundles on any computer makers and customers can purchase Atom individually or as part of the bundle,” responded Intel spokesman Bill Calder. “If you want to purchase the chip set, obviously there is better pricing.”

[via Reuters]

Earlier this week, Intel Corporation was fined $1.45 billion by the European Union regarding competitive practices.  The $1.45 billion fine imposed on Intel is a victory for Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD).  AMD is a major competitor of Intel and was responsible for the investigation.  This fine is the largest that has been imposed on a company, even beating out the fine imposed on Microsoft last year.

Intel gave computer manufacturing companies rebates to encourage them to not use AMD’s chips.  Intel has denied those charges and vows to appeal the ruling made against them.  However Intel competitors may take civil cases against them using the Commissions regulatory action as a reference for the lawsuits.

In Korea, Intel was issued a $25.4 million fine for abuse in their dominant position around 2008.  Three years before that, Intel violated the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) anti-monopoly laws by forcing full exclusivity with five Japanese PC companies.

[via ComputerWorld UK]

Semiconductor company Intel Corporation said earlier this week that they are planning to invest $12 million in a visual computing center in Europe.  The Intel Visual Computing Institute will be located at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany.  The $12 million investment will be made over the next 5 years.

The Intel lab in Germany will apply research to interactive computer graphics and will focus on natural user interfaces.  There will be about a dozen researchers working at the facility through the University and Intel.  Other employees that will work in the lab include those at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics and the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems along with the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence.

“Intel’s visual computing vision is to realize computer applications that look real, act real and feel real,” stated an Intel press release. “A key mission of the latest member of Intel Labs Europe is to contribute to the company’s tera-scale research program, which explores how multiple computing cores will be used to produce higher-performance computing and more life-like graphics.”

According to the DigiTimes, Intel has outlined their plans for notebooks and netbook products for the second half of 2009.  The company still plans to launch the Calpella notebook platform in the third quarter of 2009.  The models will be 14″, 15.6″, 17.1″, and 18.4″ with retail prices above $1,200.  The Montevina platform cost will go down in the second half of 2009 as well.

Computer manufacturing companies Quanta Computer, Compal Electronics, Pegatron Technology, Micro-Star International, Wistron, Mitac Technology, Clevo, and Elitegroup Computer Systems are already ramping up to start mass-production of Calpella notebooks for the third quarter.  Due to weak demand, Intel is considering cancelling the Atom N280 and GN40 chipset in September.

Below are the platforms, panel sizes, and price expected:
14-18.4″ panel / Calpella traditional notebooks / $1,200+
12-13″ panel / CULV ultra-thin notebook / $699 – $1,100
10″ panel / Atom N270 with 945GSE chipset netbook or Pineview CPU with Tiger Point chipset netbook / $399-$599
8″ panel / Atom N270 with 945GSE chipset white-box netbook / $256 (1750RMB)