Grove Says Clicks, Bricks Are The Future.

Future business will be based on "clicks and bricks" as Internet use drives down cost in traditional businesses, Intel chairman Andy Grove said on Tuesday. "In some years time, there will be no such thing as Internet business -- because all businesses will be using the Internet in their operations," said Grove, addressing the Confederation of British Industry in London.He signaled Intel_s move into corporate data services as he revealed plans to open a series of Internet data services in the United States. The centers are expected to offer a range of services from Web hosting to application service provision. The first of the Internet service centers is under construction in Santa Clara, Calif., and will open this year. Grove said Intel had investments in over 250 e-commerce ventures, with external investment of $4 billion dollars over the past year, a figure that outstripped internal investment for the first time in the chip giant_s history. Grove said he hoped the investments would fuel the Internet economy and in turn the demand for Intel_s services. He also said that although mobile Internet use was poised to grow significantly, the PC would remain the dominant access device for Internet use. He said he is very optimistic about the growth of digital telephones. Intel is the largest supplier of flash memory for digital phones. Grove said that whether it_s having a dominant position in flash memory or microprocessors, Intel has always competed with rivals within the law. "I don_t consider it as part of my obligations to my shareholders to foster competition," he said. During his talk, Grove offered a glimpse of the company_s 64-bit strategy, but said that production volumes of Intel_s first IA-64 architecture would not be available mid-2000. The demands of e-commerce and new services mean that by 2005, the world_s processing requirements would grow twenty-fold, he said. Another driver for processor technology was voice-recognition, said Grove, although he said the 95 percent to 98 percent accuracy offered by current voice-recognition systems was too frustrating for him to use.