ntel steadies as PC declines ease

US computer chip giant Intel reported a modest dip in earnings in the first quarter on Tuesday, amid a stabilization of the key personal computer segment. Profits in the January-March period dipped five percent to $1.9 billion, results which slightly beat Wall Street estimates. Revenues meanwhile grew 1.5 percent from a year earlier to $12.8 billion, in line with analyst expectations. Intel said revenues from its PC division dipped just one percent to $7.9 billion, as the sector steadied after years of losing ground to mobile devices. Intel said its data center or "cloud" revenues rose 11 percent to $3.1 billion. "In the first quarter we saw solid growth in the data center, signs of improvement in the PC business, and we shipped five million tablet processors, making strong progress on our goal of 40 million tablets for 2014," said chief executive Brian Krzanich. "Additionally, we demonstrated our further commitment to grow in the enterprise with a strategic technology and business collaboration with Cloudera," a software group in which Intel made a large investment this year. Intel shares rose one percent in after-hours trade following the results.