If you're looking for bargains on personal computers, bad news from the industry could be good for your pocketbook.
Computer makers are scrambling for ways to goose faltering consumer demand after a weak start to the back-to-school shopping season. That could mean deeper price cuts and other promotions beyond the incentives that the industry dangled in front of shoppers to lure them into stores during the worst of the recession.
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The latest sign of trouble came Friday when Intel Corp. lowered its forecast for the third quarter, saying demand for consumer PCs has been weaker than expected.
Because Intel's microprocessors are used in 80 percent of the world's PCs, its forecast essentially speaks for the health of the entire PC industry. Plus, its orders are based on how many computers the world's biggest PC makers expect to make in the coming months, so weak chip sales now could foreshadow weak results to come from those manufacturers.
Even before Intel announced the latest trouble, two leading PC makers — Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc. — raised red flags last week about what is normally a robust season for sales.
Dell's chief financial officer, Brian Gladden, called the back-to-school shopping season "a little weaker than we would have expected." Todd Bradley, head of HP's PC division, complained of "softness" in consumer laptops and said back-to-school shopping was off to a late start.
Barclays Capital analyst Ben Reitzes said another factor could cause PC makers to cut prices: In the past few months, the prices for parts such as hard disk drives and memory have fallen
AAPL 241.62 +1.34
AMD 6.08 +0.21
CSCO 20.81 +0.11
DELL 11.89 +0.14
HPQ 38.00 -0.22
The latest sign of trouble came Friday when Intel Corp. lowered its forecast for the third quarter, saying demand for consumer PCs has been weaker than expected.
Because Intel's microprocessors are used in 80 percent of the world's PCs, its forecast essentially speaks for the health of the entire PC industry. Plus, its orders are based on how many computers the world's biggest PC makers expect to make in the coming months, so weak chip sales now could foreshadow weak results to come from those manufacturers.
Even before Intel announced the latest trouble, two leading PC makers — Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc. — raised red flags last week about what is normally a robust season for sales.
Dell's chief financial officer, Brian Gladden, called the back-to-school shopping season "a little weaker than we would have expected." Todd Bradley, head of HP's PC division, complained of "softness" in consumer laptops and said back-to-school shopping was off to a late start.
Barclays Capital analyst Ben Reitzes said another factor could cause PC makers to cut prices: In the past few months, the prices for parts such as hard disk drives and memory have fallen
— to their lowest levels of the year in August. That gives PC makers the freedom to lower prices while maintaining profit margins.
"This component environment could potentially now allow companies to invest in more aggressive pricing to stimulate demand into next year," he wrote in a research note Friday.
Intel said it now expects revenue of $10.8 billion to $11.2 billion for the fiscal third quarter, which ends in September. That compares with a previous forecast of $11.2 billion to $12 billion. On average, analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected $11.5 billion.
Three-quarters of Intel's revenue comes from its chips and other technologies for PCs. The forecast cut means that PC makers suddenly scaled back or canceled their orders with Intel during the quarter, reflecting the lower demand they're bracing for in the coming months.
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