According to Intel CEO Paul Otellini, “Intel’s second-quarter results reflect improving conditions in the PC market segment with our strongest first to second quarter growth since 1988 and a clear expectation for a seasonally stronger second half.”

Analysts speculate this growth could be seen as a welcome development for the semiconductor industry, but also cautioned that PC manufacturers are ordering more processors not to build new machines, but because they have to restock, leaving the chipmaker industry still vulnerable.

Considering all this, Intel has weathered the recession fairly well than most of its competitors in the chip industry. While computers and mobile phones gathered dust on shop shelves, orders for microchips nearly halted. According to the Semiconductor Industry Association, global sales for semiconductors dropped 2.8% last year.

Intel’s sales revival, although encouraging, is still vulnerable to global recessions and supply. There have been six cyclical swings for the industry, the worst happening after the dot com bubble burst spectacularly and reduced sales by 45%.

In general, the semiconductor industry is facing two gigantic issues in order to survive: rising development costs and innovation needs. As the industry remains tied to the trends of the computer industry, the latter’s slowing down is forcing companies like Intel to look for another market.

Analysts at research company Gartner indicates that the PC market is expected a reduced demand of 6% in 2009, pushing Intel to seriously consider the mobile and netbook markets as alternative areas for growth.

Its current President, Paul S. Otellini, became the 5th chief executive officer in May 2005. He previously served as chief operating officer. Otellini first worked for Intel in 1974.

Craig R. Barrett, former CEO of Intel Co., is now the chairman of the board. He served as vice president in 1984, president in 1997 and CEO for six years (from 1998-2005). He has been a member of the board of directors since 1992.

Russian Ambassador Charlene Barshefsky has been a member of the board since 2004. She received her Juris Doctor from the Catholic University in America. As of 2007, she works as a partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr Law Firm in Washington, D.C.

Susan Decker, current President of Yahoo! Inc., has been a director since 2006. Upon joining Yahoo! Inc. in 2000, she served as executive vice president of Finance and Administration and a chief financial officer.

John Donahoe, the current president and chief executive officer of eBay Inc., joined the board of directors in March 2009. He received an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Since 2001, Reed E. Hundt has been a member of the board of directors. He served as chairman of the United Stated Federal Communications Commission for four years. He has a law degree from Yale Law School and a B.A. with Exceptional Distinction in History from Yale College.

In 2005, James D. Plummer was elected to the board. He is the Dean of the School of Engineering at Stanford University. He is a director of Leadis Technology Inc. and the International Rectifier Co.

A board member since 1998, David S. Pottruck is the chairman and chief executive officer of Red Eagle Ventures Inc. From 1984 to 2004, he served as president to the Charles Schwab Corporation. Since 2008, he has been chairman of Eos Airline.

Jane E. Shaw, at 70 years old, is the oldest member of the board. She is the non-executive chairwoman next to Craig Barrett. She retired after seven years of serving as CEO with for Aerogen Inc. She is also a director of the McKesson Corporation.

John L. Thornton has been a board member since 2003 and is currently the chairman of the Finance Committee. He was a professor at the Tsinghua University in Beijing and a Director of Global Leadership in China at the same time.

Frank Yeary, a new member of the board, is University of California Berkeley’s vice chancellor.

Since 1989, David B. Yoffie has been a board director. He is also the Chairman of the executive committee and Chairman of the Corporate Governance and Nominating Committee of the Board of Directors.

• Intel to Invest $7 Billion in U.S. Manufacturing Facilities
• Intel Encourages More Youth to Participate in Math and Science
• Communities Benefit From 1 Million Intel Volunteer Hours in 2008

Based in Santa Clara, California, Intel Co. was founded in July 18, 1968 by semiconductor giants Robert Norton Noyce and Gordon Earle Moore. Their subordinate, Andrew Stephen Grove, was one of the first employees of Intel Co. and played a key role in leadership following its success.

Gordon Moore, a graduate from the California Institute of Technology, was a chemist and physicist who served as executive vice president of Intel Co. for 7 years. He and Robert Noyce, physicist and co-founder of Intel, met at the Fairchild Semiconductor International, where they both left the company together.

Being Intel’s third employee, Andy Grove, scientist and chemical engineer, only became the president of the company in 1979, and CEO in 1987. He was believed to have transformed Intel into one of the world’s largest manufacturers of microprocessors.

During its founding, Intel was only known for creating semiconductors, with early developments such as the SRAM and DRAM, which are random access memory chips. By the 1980s, the current CEO, Andy Grove, managed to shift their focus from creating semiconductors to producing microprocessors, which led to a 10-year phase of exceptional growth thus becoming the most lucrative hardware seller in the industry.

The introduction of the first ever microprocessor chip was in 1971, the Intel 4004, which then led personal computers (PC) selling in large numbers after four years. IBM was the first multinational computer company to use Intel’s CPU platform, the 8088 microprocessor.

Intel 8080 and the Intel 286 followed. Compaq, a personal computer company, was the first user of the i386-based system. Then Intel 486 was introduced in 1989. Soon after, Intel created a subsequent design in 1993 named Pentium, formerly called P5. Then Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Itanium, Pentium 4 and the Core 2 Duo followed.

After numerous creations of architectures in microprocessors, Intel started a marketing campaign called “Intel Inside”, which proved to be a success in the 1990s. This program catapulted the corporation into becoming a household name.

In 2005, Intel Co. was ranked 49th in the Fortune 500 annual list of public corporations ranked by their gross incomes. So far, Intel’s biggest clients are HP, Dell, Apple, and Packard-Bell.

• Intel’s Moblin 2.0 Boosts Atom-Based Netbooks
• Intel, AMD Prep for More Cores
• Intel’s ‘Medfield’ smartphone chip gets clarity

Sources:

http://www.intel.com/intel/index.htm?iid=gg_about+intel_aboutintel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel