Intel Corporation Annual Report 1994

1994 – Annual Report

What a year. For high-performance Pentium® processors, 1994 was the best of times—and the worst of times. Just as the Pentium processor was emerging at year-end as one of 1994’s great successes, it was engulfed in a controversy over a floating-point problem in the processor. We ultimately took a $475 million pretax charge in the fourth quarter to cover replacement and write-off of these processors.

This episode reflects a strategic turning point. Quite simply, the PC is now a standard consumer tool used by a wide range of people, from preschoolers to university researchers. Many of these PC customers have more demanding—and varied—expectations for product quality, performance and service than computer users have in the past. In many ways, Intel has facilitated this transition:

• We have invested heavily in development and manufacturing capacity so we can supply high-end processors in the volumes needed for a consumer marketplace. We continued the trend of record strategic spending this year, with investments of $3.55 billion in capital and R&D, a 22 percent increase over 1993 levels.
• We have been promoting our microprocessors with wide-ranging education and marketing programs describing the benefits of Intel microprocessors.
• We have been working steadily to bring down the price and expand the capabilities of our chips to make PCs a better buy than ever before.

Overall, our strategy seems to be working. Even throughout last December’s crisis, sales of Pentium processor-based systems continued to set new records.

Read the full 1994 Intel Annual Report.