Intel Posts Record Third-Quarter Revenue
SANTA CLARA, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Intel Corporation today announced third-quarter revenue of $10.1 billion, operating income of $2.2 billion, net income of $1.9 billion and earnings per share (EPS) of 31 cents.
Context & Ripple Effects
The record lands three months after Intel's $8.7 billion second-quarter revenue, making this a step-up of well over a billion dollars in a single quarter — and CNET's same-day framing was that Intel blew through financial projections rather than merely meeting them.
What lifts the print above a routine PC-cycle data point is what Intel did in the weeks before it: revealed a Moorestown-based mobile Internet device on October 3, pushed handheld internet platforms at its Developer Forum on September 19, announced the LessWatts.org open-source power-efficiency effort on September 20, and co-founded the USB 3.0 Promoter Group the same week.
First-order effects
- Intel enters Q4 with $2.2 billion of operating income and a demonstrated habit of beating its own projections, resetting the bar for the analysts who modeled the second quarter's smaller number.
Second-order effects
- Record cash generation directly underwrites the diversification agenda Intel laid out across September and October 2007 — the Moorestown MID, LessWatts.org tooling for Linux power draw, and its founding seat in the USB 3.0 Promoter Group.
- The USB 3.0 promoter role converts balance-sheet strength into ecosystem leverage: Intel helps set the interconnect specification that its own silicon and chipsets are positioned to serve.
Third-order effects
- If each record PC quarter keeps bankrolling platform and standards bets, Intel's structural position hardens from component vendor toward rule-setter for how consumer devices connect and consume power.
- Scale at 2007 levels makes the beyond-the-PC bet self-funding, and the open question for rival chipmakers is whether they can match both the volume and the standards footprint simultaneously.
The trend: PC-cycle profitability is becoming the funding engine for Intel's push into mobile internet devices and power-efficiency standards.