SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Intel Corp said on Wednesday it no longer expects netbooks to appeal to first-time computer buyers, but sees continued sales of the ultra-portable laptops as a secondary machine or a durable option for kids. "I don't think first-time buyers are going to buy netbooks," Sean Maloney, Intel's general manager of sales and marketing, said at ...

CHIPPED CHIPMAKERS

The semiconductor sector is used to boom-and-bust cycles, but this one is a doozy. As computer owners hang on longer to their aging machines, researcher Gartner expects the biggest PC sales decline ever in 2009, with shipments falling 12%, to 275 million units. And with fewer end users, chip sales plummeted nearly 33% in January, to $15.3 ...