For the first time in almost 3 long years, Micron Technology Inc. posted a rise in profits for its quarterly earnings, beating all estimates pegged by Wall Street analysts, mainly on the back of a rise in prices on memory chips and increased sales.

Shares of the company, which had managed to improve by almost 20% in the past 3 weeks, gained another 1% after the figures of the successful quarter were made public.

The rise in earnings is being attributed by Micron Executives to the popularity of smartphones and a whole new range of personal computers that has emerged because of Microsoft's release of its latest operating system, Windows 7.

For the financial first quarter up-to December 3, Micron posted earnings of $204 Million, or 23 cents per share, whereas analysts were expecting earnings of about 7 cents a share.

"Micron is not experiencing the typical post-holiday season pullback in demand from PC customers. We're seeing strong demand coming out of the holiday end of the year", said Mark Adams, Micron Vice President of Worldwide Sales.

Revenue also recorded a 24% rise to $1.74 Billion, as compared to the figure of $1.4 Billion posted for the same period last year. Analysts were expecting a revenue figure of $1.6 Billion.