Netbooks to get higher processing power in Q2

Apr 14, 2010 06:44 GMT  ·  By

Like most other companies in the IT industry, Intel is benefiting from the steady economic recovery and has been seeing its sales and revenues grow, compared to the previous year. Unlike most, however, the Santa Clara chip maker seems to have soared instead of grown, revealing, during the latest earnings conference call, that its net income for the quarter ended on March 27 was almost three times higher than what was recorded during the previous year. Aiming to keep growing for as much as possible, the chip developer now intends to take advantage of the ongoing growth in the netbook segment by offering new Atom CPUs.

Basically, during the first fiscal quarter of 2010, the net income amounted to $2.4 billion, more than the estimated $2.13 billion and 288 percent larger compared with the income registered for the same period of the previous year (quarter ended on March 27). Recorded revenues, for the same period, were of $10.3 billion, 44% higher than last year's Q1.

This also beat market-analyst estimates, which forecasted $9.8 billion. Obviously, these developments are a cause for celebration, since they enabled "the best first quarter ever," and Intel didn't shrink from revealing part of its plans for the newly begun second quarter.

According to Intel's Chief Executive Officer, Paul Otellini, "The next innovation coming out on Atom is dual core, which comes out in the second quarter. […] I still think there will be significant growth in the Netbook business year-over-year. Features and integration (of silicon) are the technical knobs to twist here."

Netbooks are still growing, although slower, so it makes sense to release a new series of processors aimed for them. Also, while the market may be almost saturated now, a drastic increase in performance would make end-users more likely to consider acquiring a newer model to replace their older, slower one. This would revitalize the market and, consequently, would boost Intel's income even further.

The dual-core Intel Atom CPUs will come out sometime during the next three months, which means that mobile PCs based on them shouldn't be too far off.