Revenue is now expected to be US$12.8 billion, plus or minus $300 million, the company said. The previous outlook had been for $13.7 billion, plus or minus $500 million.
A Bloomberg report says the announcement signals the end of a corporate hardware refresh that last year helped to stabilise the PC market’s downward slide. Intel’s chips are in more than 80 percent of PCs.
Demand has been hurt by a “lower-than-expected Windows XP refresh by small and medium business and increasingly challenging macroeconomic and currency conditions, particularly in Europe,” Intel said.
Bloomberg notes that the PC industry, after peaking in 2011, has since been on a steady decline as consumers increasingly turn to tablets and smartphones as a means of getting online.
That slump slowed last year when many companies upgraded machinery to replace computers used in Microsoft’s “obsolete” Windows XP software, it said.
Intel plans to release its final first-quarter earnings on April 14. Its shares dropped 5.4 percent to $30.60 in early trading on Thursday.
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