Mar 25, 2011 14:47 GMT  ·  By

The first quarter of 2011 is already coming to an end, but it seems it isn't too late for iSuppli to publish some research results dealing with the 2010 situation on the worldwide CPU market.

The first quarter of 2011 is coming to a close quickly and analysts have more or less finished publishing their findings regarding the happenings on the IT market during 2010.

Still, It looks like the processor industry took especially long to analyze. That or iSuppli decided to wait until the best moment to say what it found.

As one would have expected, Intel and Advanced Micro Devices ended up maintaining the same ranking as before, with the former well ahead of the other.

Intel even succeeded in actually boosting its microprocessor market share by 0.4%, while AMD actually lost 0.8%.

This means that Intel ended the year having accounted for 81% of all CPU sales during 2010, while AMD held 11.4% of the total (2009 had left AMD with 12.2%).

“The year 2010 was a period of major transitions in the microprocessor market, with suppliers facing a raft of changes, ranging from the new competitive threat posed by media tablets to the robust post-recession recovery, to the technology revolution spurred by the rise of graphics-enabled microprocessors (GEMs),” said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst, compute platforms, for IHS.

“Despite these developments, the competitive state of affairs remained very much the same two-horse race it has been for more than 20 years, with Intel firmly in the lead and AMD a distant second. While the static market share situation is emblematic of the mature conditions in the PC segment of the microprocessor industry, the competitive situation remained intense in 2010, with the two companies fighting for every dollar possible from original equipment manufacturers.”

With AMD hoping that Fusion APUs will cause regular CPUs, especially low-end ones, to sell less and less, it will be interesting to see if it succeeds in raising its profile in 2011.