Intel Q4 Earnings: IoT, NAND & FPGAs Solutions in Spotlight

@Intel Corp. 's INTC initiatives in the Internet of Things ( #IoT), Non-Volatile Memory Solutions and Programmable Solutions Group along with cloud computing is lowering dependence on the PC market. These rapidly-growing market segments present significant prospects for the semiconductor giant in the near future. The company is set to report fourth-quarter 2017 results on Jan 25. Intel Corporation Price and EPS Surprise Intel Corporation Price and EPS Surprise | Intel Corporation Quote Click here  to know how the company's overall Q4 performance is expected to be. Segments to Aid Intel's Growth Internet of Things Group (5.3% of revenues) - Revenues jumped 23.2% from the year-ago quarter and 17.9% quarter over quarter to $849 million. Growth can be attributed to strength in industrial, retail and video applications. Intel closed the acquisition of Israel-based Mobileye, an autonomous vehicle technology provider. The deal will help the company to penetrate the $70-billion autonomous driving systems, data and services market. At CES event, the company announced few important partnerships - with BMW, Nissan, Volkswagen AG, and Ferrari - which show Intel's growing dominance in providing AI platforms which will power future vehicles. It will also leverage Intel's Mobileye-based mapping technology for improving self-driving cars navigation process. Intel also joined forces with SAIC Motor and NavInfo to extend crowdsourced map building to China. SAIC Motor will build cars of Level 3, 4, and 5. These vehicles will be powered by Mobileye technology, which means it will be able to handle most driving situations itself. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the Internet of Things Group segment is currently pegged at $859 million. Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group (5.5% of revenues) - Revenues jumped 37.3% year over year and 1.9% sequentially to $891 million. Fab 68, Intel's Dalian factory, continued to beat both ramp rate and yield goal. The factory accounted for more than half of the company's supply in the quarter where more than 70% of the total bits were 3D NAND. Recently, Intel and Micron have announced a mutual agreement to work separately in order to complete development of its third generation of 3D NAND technology. Intel and Micron will jointly develop the 3D XPoint at the Intel-Micron Flash Technologies ("IMFT"). The product, is expected to sample this year, and could enter production as early as 2019 at their joint facility in Lehigh, UT. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group is currently pegged at $938 million. Programmable Solutions Group (2.9% of revenues) - The Altera business is now the Programmable Solutions Group, which increased 10.4% from the year-ago quarter and 6.6% sequentially to $469 million. Strength in advanced products, data center, automotive and military drove top-line growth. Notably, Microsoft is deploying Intel FPGAs to develop the industry's fastest public cloud network and acceleration of deep neural networks. The company had announced that it would use Intel's 14-nm Stratix 10 FPGAs for its accelerated deep-learning platform (Project Brainwave). Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba also selected Intel FPGA's in its Cloud. Moreover, Audi is using Intel's Cyclone V SoC FPGA technology for the Level 3 autonomous driving system in its upcoming A8. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the Programmable Solutions Group is currently pegged at $475 million. Zacks Rank and Stocks to Consider Intel carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). NVIDIA Corporation NVDA , Western Digital Corporation WDC and Analog Devices, Inc. ADI are some better-ranked stocks in the same sector. All the three companies carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see  the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. NVIDIA, Western Digital and Analog Devices have a long-term earnings growth rate of 10.3%, 25.1% and 10.4%, respectively. The Hottest Tech Mega-Trend of All Last year, it generated $8 billion in global revenues. By 2020, it's predicted to blast through the roof to $47 billion. Famed investor Mark Cuban says it will produce ""the world's first trillionaires,"" but that should still leave plenty of money for regular investors who make the right trades early.

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