Mixed results came from the technology sector on Thursday after the market closed.

The electronics group Apple impressed with slightly better-than-expected quarterly figures, the online retailer Amazon.com also exceeded analysts' forecasts, but posted another loss, and the chip manufacturer Intel suffered a dramatic drop in sales.

Apple's shares initially gained around 3 percent in value after trading, Amazon's price rose by more than 12 percent, Intel had to accept a minus of 10 percent.

Apple grew its revenue last quarter by 2 percent to $83.0 billion, slightly ahead of expectations.

Net income fell 11 percent due to higher costs, but was still an impressive $19.4 billion.

Earnings per share of $1.20 were 4 cents better than expected.

Three months ago, Apple warned that tightening corona restrictions in the important Chinese market could cost it between $4 billion and $8 billion in sales this quarter.

Apparently it wasn't that bad, because as the group has now said, these losses were ultimately not even at the lower end of this range.

Sales of the iPhone, Apple's flagship product by far, rose 3 percent last quarter to $40.7 billion, slightly better than expected.

In the services division, which is now the second-largest business and includes offers such as the App Store, the payment service Apple Pay and the video platform Apple TV+, sales increased by 12 percent to $19.6 billion.

But all other divisions shrank.

Sales of the iPad tablet computer fell 12 percent to $7.2 billion, while Macintosh computers fell 10 percent to $7.4 billion, as did products like the Apple Watch digital clock and the wireless Airpod -Headphones suffered an unusual 8 percent drop this time to $8.1 billion.

Amazon surprises positively

Amazon's results were better than feared, but the bar wasn't too high either after the company disappointed and offered a cautious outlook when it reported its latest results three months ago.

Revenue rose 7 percent to $121.2 billion in the second quarter, from $119.1 billion analysts had expected.

The online retailer posted a net loss of $2.0 billion as a result of the decline in the value of its stake in electric car maker Rivian.

But the operating result, which does not take this effect into account, has more than halved to $3.3 billion.

As in the first quarter, the core business in online trading was the biggest weak point.

Here, sales fell by 4 percent.

Once again, however, Amazon was able to rely on the cloud computing business, in which sales rose by 33 percent to $19.7 billion.

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud division also remains a reliable contributor to profits.

Its operating profit rose 36 percent to $5.7 billion.

That was more than the group-wide operating profit, which means that all other divisions combined were in deficit.

Intel disappoints and lowers annual forecast

The biggest disappointment was Intel.

The chipmaker saw sales fall 22 percent to $15.3 billion, much worse than expected.

There was a loss of $454 million, compared to a profit of $5.1 billion last year.

Earnings per share also fell well short of analysts' forecasts.

The company was also forced to dramatically downgrade its own full-year forecasts.

He now expects sales of between 65 billion and 68 billion dollars, previously he had promised 76 billion dollars.

CEO Pat Gelsinger, who has only been in office for almost a year and a half, found very self-critical words.

The results are "below the standards that we have set for the company and our shareholders." This has to do in large part with the "sudden and rapid" general economic downturn, but also with in-house weaknesses.

"We must and will do better."