Intel, the processor giant has posted their best earnings ever in 2010 with a net profit of $11.7 billion for the year on revenue of $43.6 billion, a 167 percent increase from the profit posted in 2009.
“2010 was the best year in Intel's history,” Intel's chief executive Paul Otellini said in comments released with the earnings report. “We believe that 2011 will be even better.”
Their net profit for the final quarter was $3.4 billion, a 48 percent increase from the same quarter the year previous. The stock price increases more than 2 percent to $21.75 a share, shortly after this announcement of the earnings results.
Intel's business has been helped by emerging markets such as China and the cloud sector which has been adding more horsepower to servers to cope with the increasing demand.
![otellini](http://www.kitguru.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/otellini.jpg)
Otellini added “The stand-out was the data center group, Intel is positioned to benefit from the growth of the data center and cloud computing.”
Intel announced that they were going to spend almost $14 billion this year on research, developing products and more aquisitions and mergers. This follows on from our report earlier this week that they are going to pay nVidia $1.5 billion over the next five years to settle patent disputes and to ensure a sharing of information.
Otellini also said that Intels ATOM processors would be seen in upcoming tablets and smartphones which are due to hit the market soon – a stronghold for ARM processor technology.
KitGuru says: With the release of Sandybridge processor technology their profits in 2011 are surely going to improve even further.