BUDAPEST — Intel is seeing robust business for its processors and components in Southeastern Europe, with Romania the strongest market, said Robert Golubeff, manager of Intel Hungary in Budapest, a sales office with responsibility for Southeastern Europe.

Romania sales have grown more than 50% annually for Intel, mainly through demand for its Pentium Duo Core and Core2 Duo processors, he said. Government projects and the computerization of education are driving growth in 2008.

“Even without the government projects, we would still see a strong market in Romania,” Golubeff said.

The other countries in Southeastern Europe -- Serbia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo – are growing as well, he added, declining to give sales figures.

Intel has been running a program for Eastern European computer integrators, who are starting to build notebooks. In the last few years, integrators built only desktops because notebooks had too many incompatible components and devices.

“We get the integrators together and get them to use common building blocks with notebooks like they had been doing with desktops in the past,” he said.

Hungary and Romania are seeing the rise of their own domestic notebook brands, which are stocked in retail chains. Albacomp, for example, claims to run the largest PC plant in Hungary and has an annual turnover close to $100M.

In Romania, local integrators Flamingo and K-Tech Electronics also have their own lines of desktops and notebooks available in retail outlets.

Golubeff said the region is continuing on an upward trend and he expects double-digit growth this year for Intel Hungary. He has a staff of eight but expects to hire more this year.

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