New markets boost Intel revenue

  Strong demand for tablets is helping sales of Intel chips The world's largest chipmaker Intel has posted record quarterly revenues and higher profits due in part to strong emerging market demand for computing.

Revenue for the second quarter was $13bn (£8bn), up more than 20% on a year earlier, while profits rose slightly to $3bn.

The firm said it expected sales in the second half of the year to rise at a similar rate to the first.

It said demand in emerging markets was helping to drive overall sales.

"We achieved a significant new milestone in the second quarter, surpassing $13bn for the first time," said Intel's chief executive Paul Ottelini.

"Strong corporate demand for our most advanced technology, the surge of mobile devices and internet traffic fuelling data centre growth, and the rapid rise of computing in emerging markets drove record results."

However, consumer demand in more developed economies remained weak, he added.

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Microsoft reports record revenue

 Microsoft's business division, which includes Office software - is its biggest seller The US technology giant Microsoft said its annual revenues hit a record of $69.94bn (£43.4bn).

Sales of the company's Xbox 360 videogame console and its Office software helped fuel the growth.

Net income at the world's biggest software maker jumped 23% to 23.15bn for the year.

The figures, which beat forecasts, showed final quarter revenues reached a record high of $17.37bn, leading to profits of $5.87bn.

Sales rose 8% to $17.37 billion, a boosted chiefly by sales of Office, Xbox and server software behind Microsoft's push into cloud computing.

Microsoft's business division, which sells the Office suite of programs, including Outlook, SharePoint and Excel, was the company's biggest seller in the quarter, increasing sales by 7% to $5.8bn.

The company's online services unit, which runs the Bing search engine and MSN internet portal, increased sales by 16.5% to $662m, but saw losses increase to $728m as it struggles to fight competitor Google.

One weaker spot was sales of its widely-used Windows product, which are slowing as tablet PC sales eat into demand for traditional PCs.

On Wednesday, chipmaker Intel warned that PC sales would not be as strong as it had expected this year.

Microsoft is itself expected to enter the tablet market next year with the launch of its next operating system, code-named Windows 8, which will be compatible with the low-power chips commonly used by tablet and mobile phone makers.

Microsoft is the latest technology company to exceed profit expectations.

Google, Apple and IBM all reported strong earnings recently.

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