Chipmaker Intel reported Tuesday that sales of its chips for personal computers and servers were flat in the company’s first quarter.

Industry analysts had  predicted renewed demand for PCs and Intel Boss Paul Otellini said that chips for smartphones and servers in the second quarter would provide a tremendous foundation for growth in 2012 and beyond. Intel’s net income for the first quarter was $2.7 billion, or 53 cents a share, down 13.4 percent from $3.2 billion, or 56 cents a share, a year ago. Revenue of $12.9 billion was up slightly from $12.8 billion a year ago.

Otellini said that was a solid start to what’s expected to be another growth year for Intel. A lot is riding on whether Intel can sell  chips for mobile devices, particularly smartphones and tablets, as well as ultrabooks
Another wild card is how HP, Dell and other PC makers do with ultrabooks.

The figures also were too early for anyone to see if there had been any success with the new version of its Xeon chip for servers in cloud computing data centers.