• New York Times, Wednesday, October 13, 2010 8:23 AM

Intel ranked as the seventh-best global brand, just behind Coca-Cola and McDonald's and higher than Apple, Hewlett-Packard or Dell, in a recent survey from Interbrand. But the "Intel Inside" sticker slapped on so many PCs is often missing on sleek consumer devices it now powers such as smartphones, Web-ready TVs and set-top boxes, Ashlee Vance reports. But it's not because its chips aren't there; it has to do with aesthetics.

"Our customers are really trying to deliver industrial designs that are beautiful and elegant," explains Jim Nucci, a brand manager at Intel. "We don't want to be an obtrusive element."

But down the road, Vance writes, you very well may see toasters and the like emblazoned with the Intel logo. "Certain brands have the permission to do things, and Intel has the permission to have this discussion with consumers," Peter Sealey, a former CMO of Coca-Cola, says. "It's only a matter of time until it's off and running here." In the meantime, Intel's doing just fine: Yesterday it announced an 18% rise in revenue in the third quarter, to a record $11.1 billion, from a year earlier.

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