SAN FRANCISCO — The worldwide personal-computer market is pulling out of its slump quickly and could defy predictions by growing this year, Intel chief executive Paul Otellini said Tuesday.
Otellini’s comments at a conference Tuesday were more bullish than many analysts have been. Market-research firms IDC and Gartner have predicted a year-over-year decline in PC shipments this year, which would be the first such drop since 2001.
The market has been dragged by a clampdown in corporate spending on new PCs, and some computer companies are already looking to next year for an upturn. Sales of cheap little “netbook” computers, used primarily for e-mail and surfing the Internet, have been a bright spot, but those machines ring up low profits for PC and chipmakers.
Otellini said he expects PC sales to be “flat to slightly up” this year from last. He said the rebound is being fueled by the fact computers are “indispensable, something that people need in their daily lives.”
“I think that the market is poised for a resurgence,” he said.
Researchers at Gartner predict a 2 percent decline in PC shipments for 2009, though that’s better than a few months ago, when the group was forecasting a drop of 6 percent.
Otellini also used his presentation at the Intel Developers’ Forum to show off chips built on so-called 22-nanometer technology, which refers to the ever-shrinking size of circuitry on the most advanced chips. Those chips are still being developed in Intel’s factories and won’t go into production until 2011.
Each chip on the silicon “wafer” Otellini showed off has 2.9 billion transistors. Intel’s first chips in the 1970s had just a few thousand transistors.
