Biggest quarterly jump in 30 years
Intel has announced its Q3 earnings and there are some rather
encouraging developments to report. The chipmaker has been Wall
Street's tech bellwether for decades, and this time around it exceeded
even the most optimistic forecasts, which will no doubt have a positive
impact on the tech industry in general.
Basically, Intel reported the biggest quarterly revenue increase in
almost three decades. Its Q3 sales were up 17 percent sequentially, for
a total of $9.4 billion revenues with $1.9 billion profits. Mind you,
year-on-year revenues are still down, but Intel's swift recovery seems
to be surprising analysts and Wall Street alike. What's more, Microsoft
will soon launch Windows 7. The launch should boost demand for PCs and
upgrades, but both Intel and Microsoft are cautious about any
optimistic forecasts. Consumers should start migrating, and hence
upgrading, within weeks, but it will take many months for businesses to
get ready for the transition.
Intel CEO Paul Otellini pointed out that Intel's main strength was
mainly consumer driven. Corporate demand remains weak, but Intel
obviously managed to compensate with more consumer oriented platforms,
such as Atom and CULV. The market for servers and high end business
solutions will obviously take a lot more time to recover. Intel's
recently introduced Core i5 platform has brought the new Core desktop
architecture within grasp of the average consumer, and demand seems
healthy.
Atom sales were up 15 percent to $415 million, which is a rather good
result considering we're talking about a 15 month old platform. Still,
this was slightly lower than the 19 percent growth reported by Intel's
mobile division. Intel will launch next-gen Atom chips in late Q4, but
in the meantime it will also revamp its CULV platform with new
dual-core parts scheduled to coincide with the Windows 7 launch. The
first Core i7 notebooks have also started to appear, but we will have
to wait for Intel's new 32nm parts to see a fast transition to the new
architecture.