Two technology industry bellwethers, Intel Corp. and Yahoo Inc., are wrestling with competition -- with dramatically different results.
Intel, the world's largest computer-chip maker, appears to be emerging bruised but stronger after two years of a price war with Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Intel said Tuesday that second-quarter earnings rose 44% thanks to its first sales increase in six periods.
Yahoo, meantime, has been pummeled by its once-smaller competitor, Google Inc. In the company's first earnings report since Terry Semel stepped down as chief executive, Yahoo co-founder and new CEO Jerry Yang urged investors not to give up.
He said he would spend the next 100 days crafting a turnaround plan for the Internet giant, and that there would be "no sacred cows" in the effort to dramatically improve the company's performance.
"I believe Yahoo is too often defined by the competitive landscape rather than by what we can accomplish with the assets we have," Yang said. "I am determined for us to define our own path."
Yahoo is trying to catch up to Google, whose potent search-related advertising system now lets it generate more money in a quarter than Yahoo does in a year.
Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo reported a quarterly profit of $161 million, or 11 cents a share, in line with analysts' lowered expectations. Revenue rose 8% to nearly $1.7 billion.
Yahoo has been losing ground in the $21.7-billion U.S. market for online advertising. Researcher EMarketer Inc. estimates that Google now gets 27.4% of every advertising dollar spent online while Yahoo's share has slipped to 16.3%.
Yang, who in June took the helm of the 13-year-old company, said he would accelerate Yahoo's transformation by investing in innovative technologies and forcing the company to make decisions faster.
President Susan L. Decker acknowledged missteps, particularly in the search-engine business. But she said Yahoo's new system for delivering targeted search-engine ads, known as Project Panama, had yielded financial gains for the quarter, with double-digit improvement in revenue after declines a year earlier.
"We are working diligently to get Yahoo on the right path, and we are committed to addressing the root causes of our challenges rather than making only short-term cosmetic changes," Decker said.
At least one analyst was unmoved by Yahoo's pep talk.
