Intel has managed to pull yet another blockbuster quarter, with net income of $3.2 billion, up 29 percent over the same period last year, on revenue of $12.8 billion, up 25 percent year-over-year. The results surprised many investors, as well as Intel executives, who had projected more modest numbers after a much publicized chipset fiasco in late January, consolidation following two acquisitions and the effects of the Japanese earthquake on production.
During the first quarter Intel closed the acquisitions of Infineon Wireless Solutions and McAfee. Both acquisitions contributed $496 million to first quarter revenue, according to the chip giant. The fiscal first quarter also had one more week to it than usual, as the company realigned its fiscal year with the calendar year.
Intel says its PC client, data center, and "other" Intel architecture groups saw year-on-year growth of 17%, 32%, and 70%, respectively, while Atom CPU and chipset revenue climbed by 4% compared to last year, hitting $370 million.
The volume of Atom chips going into netbooks is pretty flat quarter after quarter and the company is the first to admit that this segment is the most vulnerable to tablet cannibalization. Although Intel has had a hard time cracking into the tablet market so far – or smartphones for that matter – they are responding to the challenge with the Oak Trail platform and upcoming Cedar Trail. They are also hard at work porting Google's tablet-specific Android 3.0, aka Honeycomb, to the x86 architecture, according to Intel's president and chief executive Paul Otellini, which seems to confirm recent rumors that Intel is working with first-tier notebook vendors to build tablets based on Intel chips.