Tech vendors with exposure to the hardware market have suffered as sales of PCs flatten out in the face of competition from Web-connected mobile devices and economic uncertainty, especially in Europe.

"As we look ahead at to the second half of the year, consumer market growth in Western Europe and North America is not forecasted to recover as fast as we had anticipated. Worldwide enterprise demand is growing as expected," said Intel CEO Paul Otellini on the company's earnings conference call Tuesday, according to a . "We are now expecting full-year revenue growth in the 3% to 5% range versus our prior expectation of high single digits."

For the second quarter ending in June, year over year to US$2.8 billion. Nevertheless, revenue was $13.5 billion, up 3 percent.

Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday said that quarterly profit declined 40 percent year over year to $37 million. Revenue dropped 10 percent to $1.41 billion. AMD CEO Rory Read lay the blame on flagging growth in China and Europe and a weak consumer PC market.

Company officials forecast current quarter revenue to be anywhere between 2 percent growth to a 4 percent decline from the second quarter.