14 DAY TRIAL // It looks like the third quarter was not only good for NVIDIA, but for the entire worldwide PC-microprocessor market as well, according to a recently revealed report for research firm IDC. According to the new data, the PC processor-unit shipments rose 23% compared with the second quarter of this year, while the revenue went up by 14% quarter over quarter, recording an impressive US$7.4 billion. Meanwhile, the report also indicates that Intel continued to lead the market, having managed to earn an 81.1% share of the worldwide PC processor market, gaining 2.2% over AMD.
“The story about 3Q09 leads with Atom processors being sold in mini-notebooks (a.k.a. netbooks) manufactured and sold in China,” Shane Rau, director of Semiconductors: Personal Computing research at IDC, said. “While Atom processors led the PC processor market to reach record unit shipments, on the revenue side, their low average selling price led to notable price erosion, more than 7%. As a result, while market shipments rose 23.0% compared to 2Q09, market revenue grew less, 14.1% compared to 2Q09. Most meaningful about 3Q09 is that, since PC processor shipments overall just slightly exceeded shipments in 3Q08—which was itself a record quarter at the time—we know that the processor market is recovering.”
The numbers clearly indicate that the processor market is on a recovering path, which enables IDC to raise its forecast for PC processor-unit shipments in 2009 to well over 300 million units, with an expected growth of 1.5% over the results of 2008.
As far as chip vendors are concerned, Intel further expanded its lead over AMD, which earned 18.7% of the market, with a loss of 2.0%, while VIA Technologies grabbed 2%. In addition, Intel earned an 88% share in the mobile-PC market, while AMD finished with 11.9%. In fact, Intel gained in every processor segment, while AMD lost share, further expanding the gap between the two chip makers.