Products Will Decide Intel's Future

This column was originally published on RealMoney on Oct. 19 at 10:33 a.m. EDT. It's being republished as a bonus for TheStreet.com readers.

Intel(INTC Quote) shareholders who want to know what will get the stock moving after the Street's tepid (at best) reaction to Tuesday night's earnings report should focus on the company's products.

As I've noted here before, Intel has been asleep at the product innovation wheel, allowing Advanced Micro Devices(AMD Quote) to take the lead in high-end processors.

AMD even went so far as to challenge Intel to a live battle of their respective dual-core processors. While I initially thought AMD jumped the shark with that promotion, the momentum is in its favor, and it is tough to bet against the company, especially since Intel hasn't answered that challenge.

Investors should pay heed to two issues from here.

The first is Intel's upcoming dual-core Bensley server chips, which could provide a counter to AMD's success with its dual-core Opteron and allow it to take back market share. If the Bensley platform, expected early in 2006, doesn't perform at least as well as AMD's products, Intel will find itself in product-marketing hell, especially with AMD's Opteron server chips already laying the smackdown on Intel's Xeon line.

The rumor mill is saying that Bensley isn't doing so hot in testing, but I wouldn't put an awful lot of stock into that claim just yet. However, the real-world performance of these chips could have an effect on Intel's stock price, because right now Intel is looking like a boring tech giant that needs to prove it can still innovate. If Intel fails to do that, AMD will take even more market share and investor dollars from Intel.

The second area Intel shareholders should be wary of is Dell(DELL Quote) turning to AMD chips sooner or later, especially if Intel can't top AMD's innovations. To date, and to the detriment of its shareholders, Dell has exclusively used Intel chips. Of course, for the average PC user, any old processor will do. But now that Dell has moved into high-priced gaming PCs, a move likely prompted by the success of independent gaming PC makers Alienware and VoodooPC, it is completely illogical for Dell not to offer AMD chips. PC gamers are an extremely discriminating bunch and aren't swayed by the "Intel Inside" logo.