NEW YORK (AP) -- The world's biggest chip-maker, Intel Corp., reports fourth-quarter results Thursday, shedding light on its challenges as the PC market stagnates and more consumer dollars move to smartphones and tablets, where the company is only starting to gain a foothold.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR: Intel's expectations for 2012 will be in focus. It's introducing a new generation of chips, code-named "Ivy Bridge," which should be in PCs this spring. Last week, it announced that the first smartphone with an Intel processor will be sold by Lenovo Corp. this spring in China. Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., soon to be bought by Google Inc., also committed to making phones and tablets with Intel chips.
That's the culmination of years of effort by Intel to curb the power consumption of it chips to the point where they can go into phones. But it comes as the company faces a number of threats. In the short term, the flooding of hard drive factories in Thailand and the weak global economy is hurting PC sales, and Intel cut its fourth-quarter revenue forecast a month ago.
In the longer term, Intel's dominance in PCs is threatened by phone-style chips based on designs from Britain's ARM Holdings PLC. Nvidia Corp., Texas Instruments Inc. and Qualcomm Corp. are big makers of these chips, and expect to make inroads into Intel territory when Microsoft Corp. releases its new version of Windows later this year. It will come in a version that runs on ARM-based chips. It's expected to be used in tablets first.
WHY IT MATTERS: Intel's processors are inside some 80 percent of the world's PCs, and its results are often a bellwether for other chip companies.
WHAT'S EXPECTED: Analysts surveyed by FactSet expect that Intel earned 61 cents per share on $13.74 billion in revenue. Intel's revenue forecast is for $13.4 billion to $14 billion.
LAST YEAR'S QUARTER: In the same period last year, Intel earned 59 cents per share on $11.5 billion in revenue.
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