It is the turn of big companies to feel the effects of the world economic crisis, and after Nortel filed for bankruptcy and Google announced that it will hire less people, it is Intel’s turn to start worrying. Intel's fourth-quarter profit plunged 90 percent, as the chip maker battled a worsening economy and recorded a steep loss from investments.

 In the quarter that ended in December 27th Intel made a total profit of just $234 million, compared to the $2.27 billion made the year earlier. Intel is losing investors and is currently experiencing a serious drop in its profit.

Intel has been for a long time the world leader in the field of chip manufacturing, engaging in an almost never ending battle with AMD. There are not only bad news coming from Intel, as their Atom processors is still enjoying a huge success. Atom processors are used in netbooks and very small laptops, in order to make them as small and cheap as possible.

This product, the netbook, seems especially designed for a world economic crisis and Intel is currently profiting off of it. Intel has not made any figures public for the current quarter, stating that the economic instability is not allowing them to reveal such delicate information.

Even so, Intel is planning for first-quarter 2009 revenue to be in the vicinity of $7.0 billion, down 15% from the last quarter. Things are definitely looking gloomy for Intel but analysts are confident that the giant chip company will manage to pull itself out from the recession.