Despite the fact that Intel announced, on Tuesday, its second consecutive record-breaking quarter, the earnings are way below the company's sales expectations. Number one x86 CPU manufacturer reported highest-ever fourth-quarter revenue situated at an impressive figure of $10.7 billion with 38 cent earnings per share.

This is not quite a bad situation, given the fact that Intel's worst enemy, AMD, is struggling to survive, but the last quarter revenue expectations were between $10.5 billion and $11.1 billion. Analysts estimated Intel's Q4 revenue at $10.8 billion, with earnings between 38 cents and 44 cents per share.

According to the company, the revenue for its computing products was as expected, but it was the NAND memory flash that played tricks and situated below Intel's expectations. Moreover, the CPU units encountered record sales, but their price stayed flat during the quarter.

"In the fourth quarter we saw that computing-related products actually grew as we expected...on the back of a very strong (third quarter)," said Intel CFO Stacy Smith. "The part that caused us to be a little below (the) midpoint (of expectations) was the demand pricing environment was worse than we expected."

There are concerns regarding the US economy getting weaker, but this won't do anything but scratch the chip manufacturer's income. The US market is not at all the sales hotspot for Intel, and Otellini noted that "Seventy-five percent of Intel's revenue is not in the United States, and (outside the U.S. is) where most of our growth is coming from."

Intel has announced that it estimates a revenue between 9.4 billion and $10 billion, which represents about 7 percent less than the last year revenues. According to company officials, this is the result of a combination of continued weak pricing on NAND memory sector with the cancellation of some agreements with company's suppliers.