Intel's AMD Troubles Continue

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Intel also disclosed at the conference that it had shipped 5 million of its latest line of dual-core processors in the two months since the new chip was announced. "I think the verbiage coming out of Intel's developer's forum in Taiwan indicates that the company feels confident that it should do slightly better than the seasonal average," Kumar says. Intel shares gained 1%, or 21 cents, in after-hours trading, after falling 71 cents, or more than 3%, to $20.90 before results were released.

OTHER EARNINGS ANNOUNCEMENTS

Where Intel beat analysts' expectations, cell-phone maker Motorola, which also reported results the same day, left shareholders sorely disappointed. Quarterly profit was $968 million, vs. $1.175 billion a year earlier, Motorola (MOT) said. Revenue was up by 17%, hitting $10.6 billion, but far short of the consensus forecast of $11.07 billion. The company blamed the miss on weak infrastructure sales in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa and on slower than expected sales of iDen phones, to carriers such as Sprint Nextel (S). Motorola sold 53.7 million handsets, about a million units below the average analyst forecast of 54.7 million units.

Handset prices were also hurt by the repositioning of the RAZR line of phones toward the middle of Motorola's product range. The company says it expects overall sales in the current quarter to rise to $11.8 billion to $12.1 billion. Motorola's stock finished the day down more than 2%, at $24.85, and then fell further and was down in after-hours trading by another $1.88, or more than 7%.

Elsewhere in technology, computing giant IBM (IBM) saw profits rise 47%, to $2.22 billion, or $1.45 a share on revenue of $22.62 billion. Business was led by the services unit, which turned in a $12.02 billion in sales, up from $11.7 billion a year ago. Sales of hardware, including mainframe computers and servers, grew by nearly 9% to account for $5.58 billion.

Hesseldahl is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com.