IDC reports x86 processor shipments increased 10 percent in the second quarter of 2009 compared with the previous quarter. Intel again dominated AMD in terms of market share, watching as its Atom processor shipments increased. However, IDC finds that demand for PCs has not returned yet.
The good news for
Intel, Advanced
Micro Devices and the rest of the x86 processor market is that chip
shipments increased 10 percent between the first quarter and the second quarter
of 2009.
However, IDC's Aug. 6 report on the x86
chip market found that consumer and business demand for new PCs has not
returned. Instead,
Intel
and its OEM partners drove the growth by adjusting chip inventories and
refreshing their lines of mininotebooks or netbooks that use Intel's Atom
processors.
This, according to IDC, means that
back-to-school
PC sales might not be as robust as some believe.
"IDC believes that ODMs and OEMs
have balanced out their inventories and so we can't rely on inventory
replenishment to drive market improvements," Shane Rau, an IDC
analyst, wrote in the report. "Instead, we can only rely on what actual
end demand really is, and that means we have to be cautious not to be
over-exuberant [and believe] that, say, the traditional back-to-school PC
buying season will materialize into a bullish second half. It won't."
In terms of the overall x86 market,
Intel once again dominated. In the
second quarter, Intel controlled nearly 79 percent of all x86 processor
shipments, while
AMD controlled about 21
percent.
Via Technologies controlled less than 1 percent of the market in the
second quarter.
While processor shipments jumped 10 percent from the first to second quarter
of 2009, chip unit shipments decreased 7 percent from the second quarter of
2008 to second quarter of 2009. Revenue from the x86 market increased about 8
percent quarter over quarter, but declined approximately 15 percent year over year.
Intel's overall shipments increased 12 percent quarter over quarter, while AMD's
increased 1.8 percent. Intel and its OEM partners were helped by a refresh in
the mininotebook market.
IDC estimated that one in four of all
Intel mobile chip shipments in the quarter were Atom processors, and these
chips represented about 8 percent of Intel's mobile processor revenue in the
second quarter.
In the three major market segments-mobile, server and desktop-Intel shipped
the majority of chips.
The IDC report follows
a
study by the Semiconductor Industry Association that found the global
microprocessor market had improved in the second quarter of 2009 thanks to
better-than-expected sales of handsets and PCs, as well as increased sales in China.
An earlier report from
Mercury
Research also found x86 processor shipments increased about 10 percent in
the second quarter of 2009.
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