Intel Reports Strong Quarterly Earnings:
On the day marking the 40th anniversary of what's known as Moore's
law, Intel reported revenue and earnings improvements from a year ago.
The numbers were down slightly from the previous quarter, because of
historically slow sales in the first quarter of the year, the company
said.
The quarterly financial report came a day after the company officially
shipped its first dual-core microprocessors for use in desktop PCs and
workstations.
Moore's law remains "the driving force behind our ability to continually
innovate and bring exciting new products to our customers," Intel
chief executive Craig Barrett said in a statement.
Moore's law, as proposed by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, states that
the number of transistors on a chip doubles about every two years. For
the first 38 years of the life of the law, it was most clearly demonstrated
in how chip speeds roughly doubled every two years.
But this week, the law will take the form of dual-core processors with
Intel's Pentium release Monday, and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s dual-core
Opteron announcement scheduled for Thursday. Dual-core chips provide
a performance boost by using two processors instead of one.
On Tuesday, Intel reported net income of $2.2 billion, or 35 cents a
share, on revenue of $9.4 billion for its first quarter, ended April
2.
In the same quarter a year ago, it reported net income of $1.7 billion,
or 27 cents a share, on revenue of $8.1 billion.
Revenue and earnings improvements were driven by "strong demand
for mobile products," Barrett said. Although microprocessor units
and average selling prices were flat, mobile microprocessor units set
a record
|