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Intel has once again beaten expectations as the firm reported particularly strong first quarter financial results showing 25 per cent year-on-year revenue growth.
Booking $12.9 billion of revenue, up $2.6 billion over the first quarter last year, Intel CFO Stacy Smith said the firm had benefited from strong demand in enterprise and emerging markets.
Intel boss Paul Otellini told analysts on a conference call that the firm expects growth to continue on a "sharp" trajectory, helped by the firm’s prediction of double-digit growth in PC volume in 2011 and set to continuing into 2012.
The prediction is substantially more bullish on the PC market than analysts Gartner and IDC were in recent research reports. The research firms claimed PC makers would struggle against tablets and smartphone categories in the year ahead, predicting single digit growth at best.
Otellini took issue with the research firms, pointing out that Intel had been able to predict 2010 growth "to within one point of accuracy," a vieled shot at IDC and Gartner reports which both fell wide of their initial predictions.
The Intel boss said the difference in Intel’s forecast and those of third-party researchers was down to the difficulty in tracking some PC sale channels such as emerging markets.
In terms of individual business units, the chipmaker’s PC Client group was up 17 per cent year-on-year while the Data Center Group was up 32 per cent. However the firm’s low-power Atom processor revenue had fallen 5 per cent over the previous quarter.
Intel CFO Stacy Smith said that the introduction of the new Sandy Bridge product range had resulted in increased average selling prices over the previous quarter.
