Falling PC sales have caused chip giant Intel Corp. to lower its fourth-quarter revenue forecast for a second time. Well, that and rising sales of netbooks, most of which are powered by the Intel Atom processor. The problem, of course, is in the margins: with people buying the less expensive netbooks instead of laptops, there’s less margin for the kitty.
And so revenue year-over-year will be down to $8.2 billion, Intel said. And it might have lost $1.14 billion in revenue in 2008 from the laptop-to-netbook shift, according to Rethink Wireless analyst Caroline Gabriel, and that could become a $2.16 billion loss in 2009. Nonetheless, Gabriel says the shift is necessary because Intel has to look to new markets as the traditional PC world fades away, in favor of mobile MIDs, tablets, netbooks and other connected devices that take advantage of cloud services and mobile broadband.
