AMD Gains CPU Market Share, Overall Shipments Rise

With companies taking turns posting their financial results for the latest quarter, it was only a matter of time before market analysts found out just how the overall CPU market performed, and it seems that, while it lost some share in the server market, AMD gained some ground in the PC processor segment.

Apparently, total processor shipments for the second quarter of 2010 rose, with the PC CPU shipments and revenues growing by 3.6% and 6.2%, respectively.

Mobile PC unit shipments grew by 6.5% on-quarter, while the marketing performance of server chips improved by 6.1%, leaving PC processors as the only segment to show a decline, of 0.1% to be exact.

All in all, the microprocessor market went up 1.6% sequentially, with AMD's and Intel's final figures being somewhat different from those of Q4 2009.

Back then, Intel earned 72.2% in the desktop PC market,up 0.5% on-quarter, while AMD went down 0.7 percent, to 27.3%. This left VIA with 0.5%.

Also, AMD finished that quarter with a 13.7% share of the mobile CPU segment, up 1.6%, whereas Intel held 86.1%, down 1.7%. Via earned 0.2%.

Furthermore, the x86 server/workstation market was mostly owned by Intel, with a 93.5% share (up 3.3%), while AMD's share fell by the same amount, to 6.5%.

Now, the tables appear to have turned slightly, and Advanced Micro Devices reportedly improved its hold over the worldwide PC chip market by 0.2%, for a total of 19.0%.

This left VIA with 0.3% and Intel with the fairly large chunk of 80.7% (down 0.3%).

"Such a sequential increase in PC processor shipments alone would have been enough to conclude that the first half was strong for the market,” said Shane Rau director of semiconductors: personal computing research at IDC.

“However, a modest rise in revenues, too, points directly to a rise in average selling prices. System makers bought more and higher-priced PC processors in Q2 2010 than in Q1 2010,” he went on to saying.

“Digging a little deeper into the numbers shows that they bought more mobile processors and more server processors, while desktop processors remained flat," he concluded.

As far as the whole year 2010 is concerned, IDC forecasts an overall growth of 20% for the global PC microprocessor market.