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Intel CEO: 1 million PCs shipped daily, tablets growing

Intel CEO Paul Otellini talks about market growth for tablets, Netbooks, and smart TVs at the company's 2010 investor meeting.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor
Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.
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Brooke Crothers
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Intel chief executive Paul Otellini, speaking at the chipmaker's 2010 investor meeting Tuesday, talked about market growth for PCs, tablets, and "smart" TVs.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini speaks at the company's 2010 investor meeting on Tuesday. Intel

"In 2010, for the first time, PCs cross a million a day. A million PCs a day--built, shipped, and sold in the industry. By 2014, that number basically doubles, it approaches 700 million units (annually) as the near-addressable market for our company," he said during an event that was streamed on the Web.

And within five years, Intel expects to be shipping a billion chips per year in all device markets, he said.

Addressing the market for Netbooks--small, inexpensive laptops built around Intel's Atom processor--he said Intel expects good growth ahead. "This market (Netbooks) that we created will grow north of 20 percent year-on-year this year. It's got a 15 percent CAGR (compound annual growth rate). Still no sign of material cannibalization of the notebook market by Netbooks," Otellini said.

"(Netbooks are) in the range of 40 million units (annual) and nicely growing," he said.

Otellini also had a lot to say about tablets. "On the scale of the PC industry, they're relatively insignificant. My personal belief is that tablets, like Netbooks, are additive. They're a new usage model for computing. I don't think they will take market share away from other devices," he said.

Otellini continued. "You do different things with a tablet than you do with a notebook or a desktop, or even a Netbook for that matter. A tablet is fundamentally a consumption device. Notebooks, desktops are creation devices. The tablet estimates are big numbers, 73 to 88 percent CAGR. I think the higher range is 50 to 60 million units (annual) on the curve," he said.

Overall, he said the market for computing "in units...will grow 15 to 16 percent over the next four years. The PC is still a growth industry."

And speaking about "smart" TVs, he said: "The product we're shipping today, the Atom 4100 is being selected for all of these smart TV applications because it has best-of-class video for system-on-chip of any architecture, compared to ARM, compared to some of the others that are out there."