Despite the global scarcity of chips, Intel, the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer, posted slightly lower sales in the second quarter than a year earlier. The American company sold more chips for computers and laptops, but the division that supplies parts for data centres struggled with decreased sales.

Computer semiconductors, still the most important source of revenue for Intel, delivered six percent more sales than a year earlier. But in the data centre semiconductor division, revenues fell by nine percent. Intel is struggling with the increased competition here, among other things. Not only industry peers have launched competing chips for cloud servers, but tech company Amazon has also been working on its own chips for data centres for some time. The e-commerce group is also an important customer of Intel.

According to CEO Pat Gelsinger, the contraction at the data centre division is temporary. He expects this part to grow again in the second half of 2021, he said in an interview with the Bloomberg news agency.

Total revenue for the three months to June 26 was $19.6 billion, a fraction lower than the same period last year. However, the company made a profit of 5.1 billion dollars, which is more or less equal to the net result in the second quarter of 2020.

The shortages of chips, which were the first to hit car manufacturers, are the result of massive home working due to corona measures that were introduced worldwide. Many people had to buy new PCs and other devices, and Internet traffic also became busier, increasing the demand for semiconductors.