Thanks to the German website, 3DCenter, we have been able to keep a track of the revenue and operating income of various chipmakers over the last 5-10 years. This time it has helped spot an important statistic regarding Intel’s operating revenue (final income).
Although Intel’s total revenue has been constantly growing over the last ten years, the income and the operating income has remained largely the same, even going into negative in early 2018. More importantly over the last three years, the company’s OI has remained static, despite the total revenue increasing by quite a bit.
Between 2009 and 2011, Intel’s revenue grew by ~14% and the operating income also increased by roughly the same amount. However, between Q3 2018 and Q3 2020, the company’s overall revenue increased by 10-12%, but the operating income remained more or less the same.
This can be explained by the falling profit margins and lower ASPs (average selling prices). Lately, competition from AMD has forced Intel to reduce its profit margins across all segments. Although the shrink in the consumer market doesn’t hurt much, it’s the server (Xeon) market that actually makes a difference, and Intel doesn’t disclose those figures. It’s from that market that this drop in operating revenue is coming from.
