14 DAY TRIAL // This news might not surprise too many people, but it appears that Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has seen its shares fall on Wednesday, after a report released by Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) was made public. According to the report, chips sales are going to grow by only 4.3 percent in 2008, revising down the previous growth forecast of 7.7 percent.
The same report was responsible for the falling shares of both AMD and the Santa-Clara based chip manufacturer, Intel. The trade group was confident that both Intel and AMD's main business products, processors, will benefit from a healthy growth.
"Microprocessors, which account for roughly 14 percent of total semiconductor revenues, have experienced healthy unit sales growth to date in 2008, and revenues are expected to grow over 10 percent per year for the next two years," the SIA said. The same report also stated that: "Sales of personal computers, the largest single market for semiconductors, continue to be strong, especially in emerging markets."
After the report was released, the shares of San Jose, Calif.-based AMD for the week to date fell 40 cents, or by 5.4 percent, to $7.03, thus revising last week's gain of 8 percent. On top of that, there have been recent speculations according to which AMD is planning to cancel its upcoming dual-core code named Kuma processors. These speculations have been officially denied by AMD, in a recent statement coming from one of its spokesmen.
AMD is currently the No. 2 microprocessor maker, behind long-time rival Intel Corp, which makes the recent decrease in shares not quite the best thing that could have happened for the company. AMD has lost its grip on the No. 1 spot when Intel introduced the Intel Core processors, which were capable of achieving performance levels higher than any of AMD's microprocessors.