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Intel announced its second quarter results last night, which exceeded all expectations. Revenue and profit are up across all of the chip maker's main product lines, despite some gloomy predictions to the contrary. In IT Blogwatch, some bloggers see this as the light at the end of the tunnel.
Your humble blogwatcher selected these bloggy morsels for your enjoyment. Not to mention Mario leftovers...
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Dan Nosowitz knows what's up:
The "summer doldrums" is a refrain among tech journalists, this time of year. ... But Intel bucked expectations with a huge quarter. ... $2.9 billion profit ... $10.8 billion revenue, a big increase over last quarter and a massive one over last year.
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Sales of ... the i3, i5, and i7 ... have been good. ... Sales of the Atom are ... up 16%. ... Sales of server internals are way, way up: ... cloud computing means ... high-powered servers, most of which are powered by Intel's chips ... [which] are much more expensive, and thus more profitable.
Oh, Jolie O'Dell, no jokes about your namesake PC maker, please:
Apparently, Intels most powerful microprocessors are selling like hotcakes, global recession be damned. ... Year-over-year, revenue was up 34% and net income a staggering 175% as compared to Q2 2009.
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While all this is great news for Intel, it shouldnt be looked upon as a signal of an industry-wide recovery. ... What we can infer is that the gadget sector is seeing a boom ... many consumers are refreshing their hardware arsenals right now.
Devin Coldewey has no such qualms:
So theyre doing pretty awesome. ... Were entering a recovery period, and people who have been putting off buying PCs for the last few years are opening up their wallets to buy all these bargain- and mid-priced PCs powered by Atoms and old Cores.
Neither does John Paczkowski:
For the third quarter, Intel says it expects revenue of $11.2 billion to $12 billion, surpassing analysts forecasts of $10.92 billion in sales for the period. An enthusiastic outlook and one that suggests the tech rebound will continue in the second half of this year.
Larry Dignan wonders what of Intel's Sunnyvale neighbor:
It remains to be seen if the corporate upgrade cycle brings AMD along for the ride or ... pain for its smaller rival. AMD reports ... on Thursday. Wall Street expects AMD to report earnings of 7 cents a share on revenue of $1.55 billion.
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Intel CEO Paul Otellini ... said he was bullish on Sandy Bridge, the ... successor to Nehalem, and that customer feedback ... [was] so strong that the company has ramped up 32 nanometer production and raised capex guidance. ... Otellini said he considers tablets as an additive category of computing, just as netbooks were ... which he thinks had the higher potential to cannibalize PCs.
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Intel shares were up about 7 percent after hours.
Meanwhile, Sarah Jones follows the sun:
European stocks rose for a seventh day and U.S. index futures rallied after Intel ... reported record sales and boosted its profit forecast. Asian shares [also] gained. Intel jumped 6.6 percent in German trading.
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[This is] amid easing concern that Europes debt crisis may delay the economic recovery and speculation that the selloff in equities since April has overshot the outlook for earnings.
Richi Jenningsis an independent analyst/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and security. A cross-functional IT geek since 1985, you can follow him as @richi on Twitter, pretend to be richij's friend on Facebook, or just use good old email: itbw@richij.com.
