On the desktop front, Intel foresees the strongest demand at the low end of the SMB space, at companies with under 100 employees.
"The opportunity in small business is big," said Shirley Turner, director of North American channel marketing for Intel. "Twenty-six percent of all platforms today are sold into small business."
Turner predicts a 5 percent cumulative annual growth rate over the next few years for sales of PCs into such businesses. That ramp-up will be driven by customers' replacement of aging systems.
"There are 40 million PCs in the small business environment today that are more than three years old," Turner said. "In North America, that translates into a 12 million to 15 million system [replacement] opportunity."
Intel is pitching its new 915G chipset as the platform that will give VARs a good sales story to sell into that replacement market. The chipset, when combined with the Pentium 4 processor, creates a potent PC desktop with a host of new features. These include the PCI Express fast I/O technology, high-definition audio, and integrated security features.
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