On Thursday Intel reported its quarterly earnings and the results were rather impressive.

Intel sales exceeded analyst expectations, climbing 29 percent to $1.06 billion, while its net income was $2.3 billion, a ten fold increase year-on-year.

Market researchers noted that the semiconductor industry was recovering faster than expected. Gartner reported a 22 percent jump in PC shipments in Q4 2009 and analysts now believe Intel will emerge even stronger from the downturn.

Intel also launched and aggressively marketed new, innovative products over the year and even its cheap Atom CPU made quite a difference, accounting for $1.45 billion in overall sales.

Intel's strong results boosted tech shares and tech-heavy indices in all world markets.