Server and mobile processors carry the quarter for Intel

By Alun Williams

Posted on 13 Oct 2004 at 12:05

Record server and mobile microprocessor shipments have balanced flatter desktop revenues for Intel in its latest quarterly results.

The company has reported revenues of $8.5bn, an eight per cent increase on the same period a year ago. Profits for the third quarter rose by a similar figure, to $1.9bn, with earnings per share declared as 30 cents, which compares with the 25 cents declared for the same three months a year ago.

'Intel delivered growth in both of its major businesses in the third quarter driven by record server and mobile microprocessor shipments and market segment share gains in flash memory,' said Intel CEO Craig R. Barrett. 'Growth was not as high as we originally anticipated due to inventory adjustments at some of our major customers and lower than expected overall demand for PCs.'

While Intel also saw record shipments for its chipset, motherboard and wireless units, it said that Flash memory units were 'approximately flat', a softening of the market also reported by AMD in its recent quarterly results - 64-bit chip sales boost AMD revenues.

Barrett, who is due to retire from Intel next May, highlighted the company's transition to shipping 90nm technology microprocessors and building 65nm memory chips containing more than half a billion transistors each, reflecting the company's long-term strategy of investing in leading-edge process technology.

'We also returned more cash to our stockholders with a $2.5-billion share re-purchase, our largest ever,' he added.

The results have been taken in the stride of Wall Street - at the time of writing Intel shares are down 0.33 per cent - at the beginning of September the company had already issued a profits warning for this quarter - Intel cuts revenue prediction as chip demand falls.