Intel CEO: PC Sales Could Rise in 2009

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Intel's CEO says the personal-computer market is quickly pulling out of its slump and could defy predictions by growing this year. The comments were more bullish than some analysts who have predicted a year-over-year decline in PC shipments this year, which would be the first such drop since 2001.

The market has been dragged by a clampdown in corporate spending on new PCs, and some computer companies are already looking to next year for an upturn.

Sales of cheap little "netbook" computers, used primarily for surfing the Internet, have been a bright spot, but those machines ring up low profits for PC and chip makers. Intel is the world's top maker of microprocessors, the "brains" of PCs.

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