Intel optimistic despite some economic uncertainty
Though cable news pundits may predict hard times ahead, reports from IBM and Intel for 2008 show the technology industry isn’t ready to mimic the banking industry’s financial woes just yet. Intel announced its second consecutive record-breaking quarter Tuesday, though earnings just barely met the company’s own projections.
The company said revenue for its computing products was on target; revenue for NAND memory was below expectations; and while total microprocessor units set a record, average selling prices were flat for the quarter. It’s not great news, but unless CEO Paul Otellini is throwing a smoke screen as bad as anything from the denial stage of the dot-com bust, Intel doesn’t see the sort of tech sector meltdown that some fret could occur. “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.” He said demand in its CPU business in particular continued to grow in the fourth quarter, and the company said there were no unusual cancellations of orders or build-up of inventory. “All felt pretty healthy,” Smith said.
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