Intel Atom Sales Collapse as Shipments of Other Intel Chips Soar - X-bit labs

Intel Atom Sales Collapse as Shipments of Other Intel Chips Soar - X-bit labs

Intel Corp. this week reported its fifth consequitive quarter of record revenue in a row with sales reaching about $13 billion. But as the company's financial results improve alongside with shipments of its microprocessors for desktops, laptops and servers, sales of Atom chips designed for netbooks continue to decline.

Intel's PC client group, which sells processors for desktops and notebooks, revenue were up 11% year-over-year (YoY) in Q2 of FY2011. According to Intel, around 66% of the PC client microprocessor product mix are Core i-series microprocessors, including the latest Sandy Bridge chips.

The data center group's earnings were up 15% year-over-year as sales of microprocessors like Intel Xeon, Intel Itanium and supporting logic continue to increase. In particular, Intel claims that the demand for the latest ten-core Xeon "Westmere-EX" chips launched in April is "healthy".

Other Intel architecture group revenue was up 84% year-over-year, including embedded & communications group revenue up 25% year-over-year. Intel shipped over one million units of Atom processors into embedded applications (including medical imaging, print imaging, communications and industrial applications), which is an increase of 76% YoY. NAND business was also up 15% annually.

What is noteworthy is that Intel Atom microprocessor and chipset revenue of $352 million was down 15% year-over-year. Even despite of record shipments into the embedded segment and beginning of shipments into ultra-mobile tablet segment, sales of Atom platform were down. Naturally, this means that shipments of netbooks are beginning to decrease as the devices lose their appeal for consumers because slates are gaining acceptance.

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