Chip Sales, Revenues Surge Ahead

Even though visibility into IT budgets remains murky, chipmakers are seeing growth in key segments of their business — signaling continued (if cautious) interest among IT decision-makers in buying new systems, particularly mobile offerings and servers.

Industry researcher Gartner said it’s seeing slight growth in both semiconductor industry revenues and shipments. And for Intel and AMD, two giants of the space, the trend is paying off.

Gartner is also seeing double-digit growth on track for the full year, even though it maintains that things aren’t back to normal quite yet. Hardware Central takes a look.

The PC microprocessor market got a shot in the arm in the second quarter of this year, according to a study released Thursday by IDC that suggested system makers bought more chips at a higher price.

The research firm said that worldwide PC microprocessor shipments and revenues increased 3.6 percent and 6.2 percent, respectively, in the second quarter of 2010. Historically, the average sequential change in unit shipments between the first and second quarter of a calendar year is an increase of 1.6 percent, while the average sequential change in revenues is negative 2.8 percent, leading IDC to note that this quarter’s results represent better performance than usual.

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Higher Chip Prices, Bigger Buys Benefit Intel, AMD