Intel Corp’s chief executive said on Tuesday that chip orders have been “a little better than we expected” so far in the second quarter, a sign that semiconductor sales are slowly improving.
“A lot depends on June,” Paul Otellini said on Tuesday at an analyst conference at the company’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California. “So far, so good.”
Otellini said he stood by his remark last month that personal computer sales had “bottomed out” and were recovering from their worst slump in six years.
He said he was convinced things are returning to normal in seasonal patterns and that Intel’s results had been “so far, so good” in the second quarter.
The first and second quarters are typically the toughest for chip makers, since holidays and back-to-school are bigger PC-buying seasons.
Otellini didn’t offer more detailed guidance on Tuesday. Intel predicted in its quarterly earnings report last month that second-quarter sales would be about the same as the first quarter’s.
First-quarter revenue was US$7.1 billion, down 26 percent from the same period last year.
While corporations have put off replacing their PCs, demand from consumers “has held up reasonably well,” Sean Maloney, head of Intel’s sales and marketing, said on Tuesday.
Intel sees an opportunity to sell more server chips as companies replace older machines, he said. There is no “unhealthy” buildup of unsold parts, Maloney said.
“We are at some kind of a new base — we’ve seen things stabilize,” he said. “We’ve seen a return to confidence in some areas.”
One thing Otellini didn’t mention in his speech was the possibility of a huge antitrust fine in Europe for Intel’s allegedly abusive behavior toward Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Inc.
A EU fine against Intel was expected to be announced yesterday.
European regulators have accused Intel of illegally thwarting AMD’s business by offering big rebates to computer-makers and retailers to avoid AMD’s products and selling its server chips below the cost of making them. Intel has denied the allegations and maintained its practices are legal.
In a response to a question, Otellini later said he wouldn’t comment on “rumors” about a possible European fine.
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