Posting mixed earnings, Intel tries to catch up in mobile while getting ahead in wearable tech and the web of factors.

Intel’s fiscal fourth quarter indicates the computer market’s ongoing slump is probably slowing, however the chipmaker still posted mixed marks. Points of outrage include Intel’s modest presence within the mobile market in addition its lower-than-anticipated revenue from data center products.

The company reported Thursday that it earned revenue of $13.8 billion, which translates to 51 cents per share, for the quarter that ended December 28. Wall Street analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected per-share earnings of 52 cents on $13.7 billion in revenue. Intel earned $13.48 billion during Q4 of 2012.

For all of 2013, Intel reported a 1% decline in revenue, to $52.7 billion, in addition to slightly larger drops in gross margin, operating income, net income, and earnings per share. The corporate finished the year with greater than $20 billion in cash.

[What’s going to happen to all those XP machines and their networks on April 8? Read Windows XP Won’t Go Quietly.]

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich called the performance “solid” during an earnings call with analysts. He emphasized that the corporate was investing to get its new line of Atom processors inside more mobile devices. He said its quad-core Atom chip will come to Android tablets within the second quarter.

“We made a shift [to Android],” he told analysts, reminding them that the chips were originally devised with only Windows in mind.

Krzanich said Intel’s processors were in additional than 10 million tablets by the top of last year, and that the corporate hopes to succeed in quadruple that volume by the top of 2014. He also promised dozens of recent 2-in-1 devices will hit the market later this year.

Intel makes around two-thirds of its revenue from PC chips, and with the pc market tanking during the last year, the corporate has faced pressure to concentrate on smartphones and tablets. Time will tell if Intel could make headwind within the competitive mobile space, where most devices run on ARM-based chips. But meanwhile, it is able to take solace in indications that the computer market may be bottoming out.

Intel CFO Stacy Smith said the computer market is stabilizing. The corporate reported that desktop volume and average selling prices increased within the fourth quarter, and that it shipped a record variety of its Core i7 chips.

With Windows XP set to lose support in April, some analysts expected PC sales would modestly rebound in Q4, as businesses replaced aging systems. But Smith said XP’s impending retirement played just a minor role through the quarter.

Intel’s chips for data centers performed below expectations. Krzanich indicated healthy demand for chips to power cloud servers but said sales for other data center products were softer than expected. The division posted an 8% year-over-year increase in revenue, but many of the gains derived from a slight uptick in average selling prices. Unit sales improved by only one%.

Looking forward, Intel expects increased demand for server chips because the proliferation of mobile devices drive the adoption of cloud technologies. The corporate is usually aggressively pursuing new technologies designed for wearable technology and the net of factors, either one of that have been major themes during Krzanich’s recent CES keynote speech.

Michael Endler joined InformationWeek as an associate editor in 2012. He graduated from Stanford in 2005 and previously worked in talent representation, as a contract copywriter and photojournalist, and as a teacher.

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