Intel Corporation's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats

Intel SWOT Analysis

The following is an analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) of Intel Corporation. What is noteworthy regarding this company is their ability to continually reinvent themselves beginning with Research & Development (R&D) processes and strategies first, then emanating to all other areas of their value chain (West, Iansiti, 2003). This has led to Intel surviving many generations of technology shifts while competitors less agile have either been consolidated into other companies or exited key markets (Raynor, 2011).

Strengths

The following are the key strengths of Intel Corporation. First, they have the most comprehensive product line of microprocessors of any technology components company globally, which gives them the ability to quickly move into entirely new markets and dominate them (West, Iansiti, 2003). Second, Intel is exceptionally skilled at creating alliances and partnerships that serve as strong catalysts of innovation, greater market adoption (as the alliance with Microsoft did for literally billions of dollars in the PC era) and highly profitable aftermarket opportunities as well (Raynor, 2011). A third key strength of Intel is the depth of technical expertise they have in all phase of microprocessor and component research and development (R&D) (West, Iansiti, 2003). All of these factors have contribution to the financial strength and stability of the company, one of the strongest in the microprocessor and components industry. Many industry experts point to their ability to disrupt their own innovation pace and increase it, in effect cannibalizing themselves before anyone else can (Raynor, 2011).

Opportunities

Intel is ideally positioned to excel with the exponential growth of smartphones and tablet PCs as they are the dominant provider of chipset and processors for these devices. They are also very well positioned to capitalize on the growing investment in cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) data architectures as well. Intel has one of the most advanced R&D centers there are in the semiconductor industry for managing the development of advanced blade server design, a key component in cloud data center configurations (West, Iansiti, 2003). In addition to all of these opportunities the move towards virtualization also favors where Intel has invested their R&D efforts into system software integration to their hardware platforms.

Threats

Intel is often accused of being too much of a consolidating and pricing force in the component and microprocessor marketplaces, considered by many regulators as a threat to industry structure. In reality their supply chain is entirely electronic and very efficient, yet also very costly to maintain (Sammon, Hanley, 2007). They have redefined competitive speed and agility in their core markets and are often seen as a potential source of antitrust in the U.S. And foreign markets. This is a major threat to their ability to move into new markets. Another threat is the lack of stability in many of their suppliers located throughout Asian nations known for human rights violations and questionable ethics activity including the use of child labor (Hannigan, Mangan, 2001). Intel has stepped up their monitoring of suppliers as a result, and will continue to police their entire supplier base as a result. On top of these threats there are the Asian and Russian components producers willing to invest well over $1B to get a new chip foundry up and running and sell at a loss for years to gain market share from Intel.