Net income climbed to $US1.6 billion from $US1.28 billion, Intel said today in a statement. Sales also gained 9.1 per cent to $US9.47 billion.

The report notes Intel in April projected sales of between $US9 billion and $US9.6 billion and "Intel released an updated design of its best- selling Centrino notebook chips yesterday to fuel demand this quarter".

However it was not all good news for Intel, as the division that makes memory chips and other semiconductors had "an operating loss of $US706 million last quarter on sales of $US300 million".

Bloomberg notes that the memory business formed a joint venture to produce Nand flash memory with Micron Technology, with the division suffering from a glut of products, which store data in mobile devices such as Apple iPhone, with prices of flash chips falling by as much as 20 per cent in June.