Intel Quarterly Report Reveals 25% Profit Increase

While AMD seems to be having bad luck as of late, Intel shows off the company's growing health. In its quarterly report, the company announced that profits rose 25%, beating previous expectations. Only Intel's gross margin report was slightly disappointing, which only managed to land within the company's target range. With everything said and done, everyone seems to agree that things are going well for the chip maker.

A major concern for a while was the impact on profit of the low-end PC market, which is one of the reasons why this news is somewhat surprising. Ashok Kumar, a CRT Capital Group analyst, held the concern that demand may have topped and the higher sales of inexpensive, low-end processors could have damaged their success, which clearly wasn't the case overall.

I believe that more than anything, the earnings report shows that the technology industry is showing growth even in the recessive economy. With the other big name companies ready to release their quarterly reports within the next week, including Google, Microsoft, and Apple, we're sure to see other signs of profit.

Intel Corp. had a quarter of ups and downs.  It was shocked when the Federal Trade Commission announced that it would be formally investigating whether the company, which controls roughly 80 to 90 percent of the worldwide microprocessor market, abused its dominant position in an illegal fashion.  

Despite this down, there were numerous ups.  Amidst a war of words with NVIDIA, Intel forged ahead with its upcoming discrete graphics offerings, set to take on NVIDIA and subsidiary ATI, owned by its chief microprocessor competitor, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).  Intel also was pleased to see a strong Centrino 2 launch with many partner products, after concerns stemming from some initial glitches and delays.

Source: DailyTech

AMD CEO Steps Down

Things have certainly been rough for AMD as of late. Today, AMD's CEO, Hector Ruiz, stepped down from his position at the company. There is no way of knowing whether or not his departure is a result of the company's performance, but after Jerry Sanders' and Phil Hester's leave, you have to wonder what the plan is for the future at the company.

With all of that said, I, as well as many others want to see AMD truly step up in the consumer CPU industry. While AMD probably won't leave us any time soon, with Intel all but dominating the space, the migration back over to Intel CPUs will leave the company in a hard position to compete with.

The CEO of chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. is stepping down.

Hector Ruiz had been just the second person to lead AMD after company founder Jerry Sanders. He'll be replaced by the chip maker's No. 2 executive, Dirk Meyer.

Source: Seattle P-I , Via: Engadget

July 17th Tech Roundup

• MSI P45 Platinum & Asus Maximus II Formula - Madshrimps

• BenQ G2400W LCD Display - Overclockers Club
• Zotac GTX 280 1GB AMP! Edition - TheTechLounge
• Leadtek WinFast GTX 280 - Bjorn3D

• A-DATA Gaming Series DDR2-800 4GB - ThinkComputers
• Kingston HyperX PC3-12800 2GB - ASE Labs

• Coolink Chillaramic Thermal Paste - Tech-Reviews

• Hiper Osiris - techPowerUp
• Antec Three Hundred - HotHardware
• OCZ EliteXStream 1000W - PC Perspective
• SilverStone Decathlon 700W - Technic3D

• Monster iCarPlay Wireless 250 FM Transmitter - DragonSteelMods