CPU Sales Slide Down in Second Quarter, AMD Gains

The second quarter of 2011 is well over and done with, while the third is nearing its half, so market analysts are publishing their findings, this once outlining the happenings on the CPU market.

The central processing unit market segment of the IT industry is what one might call a veritable battleground.

For years Intel and Advanced Micro Devices have been the major powers, and while Intel is well ahead in terms of market share, AMD's own chips have been holding their own and, apparently, steadily gaining.

During the second quarter of this year, for instance (April-June, 2011), the latter managed to see its market share increasing by 1.5% compared to 1Q11, according to IDC.

Meanwhile, Intel lost 1.5% of its own, though this still left it with a share of 79.3% of the worldwide shipments. This left AMD with 20.4% and VIA with 0.3%.

Regardless, when looking at the CPU market shipments overall, things actually slid down, by 2.9% compared to the first quarter, though the level was about the same as the one of 2Q10.

"The first quarter of 2011 was better than most first quarters due to the extra calendar week," said Shane Rau, director of Semiconductors: Personal Computing research at IDC.

"So the sequential comparison isn't surprising. If we took off that extra week, the performance between the two quarters probably would've seen a seen a slight sequential uptick from 1Q to 2Q."

All in all, the PC processor market earned $9.49 billion, 4.0% less than during the January-March period but 5.4% more than during the April-June quarter of 2011.

Moving forward, IDC predicts that processors with integrated graphics will come to account for 60% of the total by the end of the year, possibly pushing AMD's to gain a bit more on Intel thanks to the Fusion platform.