Intel Beats Earnings Estimates, Posts Strong Growth Despite Renewed Competition
With the exception of its Programmable Solutions Group, all of Intel’s other key business units were up (some significantly) compared to the same period a year ago. Intel’s Client Computing Group remains its largest revenue generator, boasting a 12 percent revenue increase over the same period last year to $8.2 billion. The Data Center Group and Internet of Things Group were up 9 percent and 26 percent respectively. The big winner on a percentage basis, however, was the Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group, which posted a 58 percent gain YoY to $874 million in revenue.
Intel Core i9-7900X
“Q2 was an outstanding quarter with revenue and profits growing double digits over last year,” said Intel CEO Brian Krzanich. “We also launched new Intel Core, Xeon and memory products that reset the bar for performance leadership, and we’re gaining customer momentum in areas like AI and autonomous driving. With industry-leading products and strong first-half results, we’re on a clear path to another record year."
During the quarter, Intel launched a number of new products including the initial members of the Core X-Series of high-end desktop (HEDT) processors and its new Xeon Scalable processor family for the data center market. Intel is also making large strides in the artificial intelligence market (where NVIDIA has been making some big gains). In addition, Intel has its eyes on the self-driving vehicle field thanks to its acquisition of Mobileye. Intel expects for that transaction to close during the third quarter.
Looking forward, Intel will be facing some of the strongest competition in years in two of its most important business sectors: consumer PCs and data centers. Ryzen is already proving to be a big winner for AMD and its enthusiast-oriented Ryzen Threadripper processors will launch next month to take on the Core X-Series. On the data center front, AMD’s EPYC family of processors will deliver up to 32 cores (and 64 threads) of computing muscle per socket.
