Intel Corp, the world's top chip maker, shipped five million of its new dual-core processors in the first two months of its sales, amid signs of strong demand for laptop personal computers this quarter, company executives said on October 16.
Intel reached the sales mark for the new Core 2 Duo, which use a pair of processing cores on a single chip, within the first 60 days of their going on sale on July 27, Thomas Kilroy, vice general manager of the digital enterprise group, said at a developers' forum hosted by Intel in Taipei.
Still, the Core 2 Duo chips will account for only a small fraction of the nearly 200 million processors Intel is expected to sell this year.
"The Core 2 Duo by no means is the biggest seller at this point," said Jim McGregor, an analyst with market research firm In-Stat. "They've also been shipping a lot of older products, which they've discounted considerably."
"There seems to be a lot of value-oriented stuff in the market right now."
Intel gave the sales figure as other executives forecast a strong fourth quarter for notebook PCs, despite some concerns about possible shortfalls due to a string of recent recalls involving batteries from Sony Corp.
"We believe that notebooks will be strong in the fourth quarter," said Mooly Eden, general manager for Intel's mobile platforms group.
"The overall perception is that we will have a strong fourth quarter," he said, citing data from industry tracking groups and Taiwan firms that make most of the world's laptop PCs, such as Compal Electronics Inc and Quanta Computer.
Intel shares rose nearly 2 percent on Nasdaq before giving up most of those gains to trade at $21.71, up 11 cents or 0.5 percent, at mid-afternoon.
Despite some reports of shortages and rising prices following the recall of Sony laptop batteries by the likes of Toshiba Corp, Dell Inc and Hewlett-Packard Co, Eden said Intel was not seeing major fallout from the issue.