Looking to keep its sales up in a market where the demand is quickly decreasing, Intel announced several price cuts for some of its processors. The biggest discount is of 48 percent and it is also considered the best way to address the new series of low-cost chips released by Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD announced its new line of Phenom II quad-core chips for high-end desktops, which will be available at prices between $235 and $275.

Customers will be able to purchase the Celeron 570 processor for laptops at the new price of $70 (after a 48 percent discount) and the company’s quad-core desktop-computer models for $316, after a 40 percent discount. Intel also introduced the Core 2 Quad Q9400s processor, running at 2.66GHz, and the Core 2 Quad Q8200s, which runs at 2.33GHz, with the first chip priced at $320 and the second at $245.

Intel’s top of the line and also most expensive desktop chips did not suffer any changes, as their price remained the same.

The company’s officials stated that the general belief is that things will return to normal sometime in the second half of 2009, but did not detail on the matter, citing economic uncertainty.

The strategy also involves the reduction of its processor inventory in order to make room for a new line of chips which will be developed on the Nehalem microarchitecture.

During last year’s final quarter, Intel recorded revenue of $8.2 billion with a net income of $234 million, or 4 cents per share. Looking at 2007’s figures, the situation is far from being good, as the company reported in the fourth quarter a net income of $2.3 billion, or 38 cents per share, with revenues of $10.71 billion.