Money on the table(t)
Despite the increasing precariousness of the global economic recovery and the consequent caution on the part of consumers, Intel managed to get its revenues above $11 billion ($11.1) in a quarter for the first time in Q3, resulting in net income of $3 billion and EPS of 52 cents - slightly above expectations.
"These results were driven by solid demand from corporate customers, sales of our leadership products and continued growth in emerging markets," said Intel CEO Paul Otellini, but he was especially keen to promote what's coming up.
"Looking forward, we continue to see healthy worldwide demand for computing products of all types and are particularly excited about our next-generation processor, codenamed Sandy Bridge, and the many new designs around our Atom processors in everything from the new Google TV products to a wide array of tablets based on Windows, Android and MeeGo operating systems."
This is interesting in what it confirms about MeeGo. Firstly that we can expect to see devices soon, but it also serves as a reminder - if one were needed - that Intel is a chip manufacturer, not a software designer. It just wants to sell a shed-load of chips and if they go in Android tablets that's just fine.
We didn't sit in on the Intel earnings webcast - which occurred late last night UK time, so we had a cheeky look at the WSJ live blog instead. It seems that tablets were indeed a big focus for Otellini, with the phenomenal sales of Apple's iPad doubtless having got his attention. He concratulated Apple on reinventing the category, but vowed that Intel would win that segment. Good luck with that Paul.
Other than that, we get the impression Intel's healthy earnings - and margins - are underpinned by the datacenter market. Devices like tablets and smartphones, as well as the growth of cloud computing, means the demands for remote computing resources continues to grow exponentially and most of those run on high-margin Intel processors. Nice.
