Although Advanced Micro Devices continues to struggle against Intel, not all the news coming from the chip maker is that bad, according to a new report from market research company iSuppli.
In the fourth quarter of 2007, AMD actually got back some of its lost revenue market share, although the company’s gains amounted to less than 1 percent in the last months of the year. For that time, AMD’s market share stood at 14.2 percent, up from 13.9 percent the previous quarter. Intel’s share of chip market revenue stood at 78.9 percent for the quarter, an increase of less than 1 percent.
For 2007, Intel gained back 4.3 percent of market revenue share for a total of 79.2 percent, while AMD lost nearly 3 percent for a total of 13.2 percent. The iSuppli report, released April 22, calculates worldwide revenue from x86, RISC and all other general-purpose processors.
When combined, Intel and AMD controlled 92 percent of all market revenue in 2007, according to iSuppli.
The report found that rising demand for notebooks and steady prices for processors-Intel cut the price of some its chips April 21-helped AMD hold steady in the fourth quarter.
“Global unit shipments of PCs in the fourth quarter rose by 14.2 percent compared to the same period in 2006,” Matthew Wilkins, an analyst with iSuppli, wrote in the report. “This strong demand, along with increased sales of higher-end microprocessors, helped to sustain ASPs [average selling prices].”
Overall, iSuppli found that the delays in bringing its quad-core server and desktop processors to the market in late 2007 hurt AMD’s revenue share, but that could change in 2008 if the company comes back with strong products to counter Intel’s new line of chips, code-named Nehalem.
iSuppli officials said they believe the price war between AMD and Intel will continue to slow, although the market is subject to the continued fallout of the credit crisis and less consumer spending when it comes to PCs.