Santa Clara: Intel Corp expects to double its earnings growth in the next few years as the world's top microchip maker spreads its chips beyond PCs to electronic gadgets like smartphones and televisions.
Chief Executive Paul Otellini told investors on Tuesday that Intel is eager to establish a footprint in fast-growing - but intensely competitive - markets, diversifying beyond a PC market it now dominates.
"We are poised to take smart computing into whole new segments where it hasn't been before," Otellini said at the company's annual investor meeting at Intel's Santa Clara, California, headquarters.
The company also said it remains "highly confident" that it will achieve its financial goals for the current quarter despite rising concerns about European economies amid Greece's financial crisis.
Otellini said on Tuesday he sees annual revenue and earnings growth reaching the low double-digit percentages over the next few years after shrinking in 2009, a year that marked the worst economic and tech spending downturn in decades.
He noted that the compound annual growth rate of its earnings per share during the past five years was roughly half of the low double-digit growth rate that the company is now expecting.
"So we're essentially committing to forecasting to double the growth rate of earnings, and double-digit growth rate on revenue for the company as a result of all these initiatives," Otellini said.
Intel, which makes the microprocessors used in more than three quarters of the world's PCs, gave investors a bullish assessment for the PC market in coming years, even as consumers increasingly snap up new breeds of gadgets like Web-connected smartphones and tablets like Apple Inc's recently released iPad.
Tablet erosion?
Otellini said he does not expect tablets to eat into sales of PCs. Including tablets, Otellini expects the PC market - now led by Hewlett-Packard Co, Dell Inc and Acer Inc globally - to grow between 15 percent and 16 percent during the next four years.
"My personal belief is that tablets, like netbooks, are additive," Otellini said. "I don't think that they will take market share away from other devices."
Unlike in the PC market, where Intel's microprocessors are dominant, the mobile device market is crowded with strong competitors like Texas Instruments Inc and Qualcomm Inc, which make chips based on ARM Holdings Plc designs and architecture.
Intel has developed the new Atom processor in recent years to compete in the mobile market. To date, Intel's Atom has been widely adopted in no-frills netbook PCs but has yet to gain favor among phone-makers.
This month, Intel began shipping a version of the Atom that is more power-efficient and that the company said is better suited to smartphones, though the company has not yet announced any customers for the chip.
Shares in Intel gained 0.5 percent to $ 22.66 in afternoon trading, alongside Nasdaq's 1.2 percent gain.
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