San Francisco - Shares in computer chipmaker AMD declined sharply Tuesday after the company announced plans to axe 10 per cent of its work force or 1,600 employees and reported a 15 per cent drop in first-quarter revenue. AMD said the lower-than-expected revenues were due to delayed purchases of desktop and server computers because of a bug discovered in an AMD chip in December.
The main competitor to chipgiant Intel said it lost 1.77 billion dollars in the fourth quarter due to a write-off of the chipmaker's 2006 acquisition of graphics card maker ATI for 5.6 billion dollars.
AMD said it planned to re-enter the black by the third quarter of the current fiscal year. In trading Tuesday in New York, AMD was down 26 cents, or 4.1 percent, to 6.08 dollars.
Other chip-related shares fell, with Infineon down 6.3 percent and ARM down 3.7 percent. Intel was down 2.4 percent in midday trading to 21.23 dollars.
