In reporting the company's numbers Tuesday evening Intel CEO Paul Otellini said that "We believe PC sales bottomed out during the first quarter and that the industry is returning to normal seasonal patterns."

If true, there will be dancing in the streets but even if true there are going to be lots of broken nails clawing out of the hole we've gotten ourselves in.

Otellini offered no formal revenue guidance for the second quarter citing "continued economic uncertainty and limited visibility."

The best Intel could do was say that "for internal purposes, the company is currently planning for revenue approximately flat to the first quarter," with a gross margin in the mid-40s. It indicated that it expected to trim its CAPEX for the year but not how much.

Intel's first-quarter results beat the Street. It earned $647 million, 11 cents a share - when the best the analysts expected was three cents.

Its earnings were up 178% sequentially but down 55% year-over-year.

Revenue came to $7.1 billion, down 13% sequentially and down 26% year-over-year, but marginally better than the handicappers' $6.98 billion.

Intel's operating income was down a nasty 56% sequentially and 68% year-over-year to $670 million and its closely watched gross margin fell seven points sequentially to 46%. Intel attributed the drop in margin to "higher factory underutilization charges and start-up costs."

It said the number of microprocessors it shifted in Q1 was less than in Q4 and that even the fabled Atom chip expected to save Intel's lunch came up short. Revenue from Atom and its chipsets was down 27% sequentially to $219 million.

The company reported that ASPs for all processors were generally flat sequentially

Inventories, it said, which had been mounting there for a while, were reduced by approximately $700 million in the first quarter. It's unclear exactly how much shelfware Intel's got.

Restructuring and asset impairment charges were $74 million in Q1, less than the expected $160 million and it lost $18 million on equity investments and interest, less than the $130-million loss expected because the market for certain debt instruments strengthened at the end of the first quarter.