Intel's PC chips rise after record slump

Intel Corp's main personal-computer processor business is slowly picking up after a record industry slump, though the company's push to get into faster-growing mobile-phone chips has hit hurdles.

The world's largest semiconductor maker yesterday posted higher first-quarter sales and projected revenue that, according to estimates of analysts said the PC market was stabilsing.

However, it said at the same time that the phone and tablet chip business posted a quarterly operating loss of over $900 million as sales plummeted 61 per cent.

In its bid to stem the decline in its largest business, PC processors, the mobile unit's losses come as a reverse to INTEL CEO Brian Krzanich, who termed the success in mobile ''critical.''

With profits under pressure and Intel not able to get any traction with phone and tablet customers after years in the market, leading investors were questioning the company's future as a mobile-chip designer.

Bloomberg quoted Michael Shinnick, a fund manager at Wasatch Advisors Inc, which owns Intel shares as saying, from the raw financial analysis it was clear that the company was trying for a long time, and even after making some acquisitions, it appeared not to be working and looked like a long-term capital drain.

Meanwhile, while Intel was trying to to raise its share of the tablet market, and with Windows not gaining traction on those devices, Android was where its market would be.

Intel aims to see its chips in 40 million tablets this year, and 80 per cent to 90 per cent of those would run Google's Android OS, Krzanich said yesterday.

At the same time Intel was not abandoning Windows. According to Krzanich he expected Windows to ''grow and gain traction,'' and more Intel-based tablets running both Android and Windows would be shown in June at the massive Computex trade show in Taipei.

PC World quoted Krzanich as saying that, the company's mix of OSes reflected pretty much what one saw in the marketplace.

Most Intel-powered tablets running Android today used the older Medfield and Clover Trail+ chips, and more Android tablets using Atom processor, called Bay Trail, would be shipped out later this quarter.