Thanks to strong sales of central processing units for personal computers, servers, tablets and other types of devices, Intel Corp. sold the record number of microprocessors in one quarter ever in the second quarter of its fiscal 2014. The company said that multiple factors affected demand for chips during the period.

“The improving economic environment, PC refresh, form factor innovation and the end-of-life of Windows XP combined to drive better than expected demand [for our products], said Brian Krzanich, chief executive officer of Intel, during the quarterly conference call with financial analysts and investors. “In fact microprocessor volume in the second quarter was an all-time record.”

Intel did not reveal the actual amount of microprocessors it sold during the quarter, but said it managed to ship ten million of chips for media tablets, which was in line with expectations. The company also sold more processors for desktops, notebooks and servers than it expected.

Intel’s PC client group, which sells microprocessors, chipsets and other logic for desktops and laptops, had revenue of $8.7 billion, up 6 per cent year over year. The world’s largest chipmaker said that client platform volumes were up 9 per cent and platform average selling prices were down 4 per cent from a year ago.

According to Intel, desktop platform volumes were up 8 per cent and desktop platform average selling prices were up 2 per cent on a year-on-year basis in Q2 FY2014. Notebook platform volumes were up 9 per cent and notebook platform average selling prices were down 7 per cent compared to the second quarter of 2013. Relative to the first quarter, PC client group’s revenue was up 9 per cent with platform volumes up 12 per cent and platform average selling prices down 3 per cent.

The company’s data center group had revenue of $3.5 billion, up 19 per cent on a year-on-year basis. Platform volumes were up 9 per cent and platform average selling prices were up 11 per cent over the same period a year ago. DCG’s revenue was up 14 per cent from the first quarter with platform volumes up 12 per cent and platform average selling prices up 3 per cent.

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KitGuru Says: It looks like sales of PCs and microprocessors are indeed improving. While it is doubtful that Intel makes any significant amount of money selling processors for tablets, it looks like the company does not have to lower prices of PC and server CPUs in order to sell record volumes. Good news for Intel and the industry (i.e., AMD).

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