Form factor breakdown
One of the main reasons for Intel's surprisingly poor performance will have been a significant drop-off in demand for its Atom Low-power CPUs. These are pretty much ubiquitous in netbooks and shipments dropped by a third between Q4 and Q1. IDC reckons Atoms still comprised 21 percent of Intel's mobile PC processor shipments in 1Q09 but only 6.5% of revenues.
The form-factor specific tables below show that AMD gained share from Intel in both the desktop and mobile spaces. The drop-off in Atom probably accounts for most of the mobile shift and aggressive pricing in the mainstream desktop segment seems to be paying off for AMD too.
Before AMD breaks out the champagne, it might want to consider a few things, however. The Atom drop-off could well be an anomaly produced by the widespread lowering of inventory levels by OEMs. It could be that they used up a lot of their excess inventory last quarter and, with demand still apparently healthy for netbooks, will start buying again this quarter.
The other fly in the ointment was the loss of market share in the server space. Having only launched its new server processor - codenamed Shanghai - last November, AMD must have hoped to take some share from Intel in this sector. Now that Intel's Xeon 5500 series has been launched that opportunity might have been missed.
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Worldwide Desktop PC Microprocessor Unit Market Share by Vendor, 1Q08-1Q09, 2007-2008 |
||||||||
|
1Q08 |
2Q08 |
3Q08 |
4Q08 |
1Q09 |
2007 |
2008 |
||
|
Intel |
73.1% |
73.3% |
73.5% |
73.9% |
70.0% |
73.5% |
73.4% |
|
|
AMD |
26.7% |
26.4% |
26.4% |
26.0% |
29.8% |
26.2% |
26.4% |
|
|
VIA |
0.2% |
0.3% |
0.1% |
0.1% |
0.2% |
0.3% |
0.2% |
|
|
Total |
100.0% |
100.0% |
100.0% |
100.0% |
100.0% |
100.0% |
100.0% |
|
|
Worldwide Mobile PC Microprocessor Unit Market Share by Vendor, 1Q08-1Q09, 2007-2008 |
||||||||
|
1Q08 |
2Q08 |
3Q08 |
4Q08 |
1Q09 |
2007 |
2008 |
||
|
Intel |
85.2% |
86.5% |
87.4% |
89.1% |
84.3% |
82.3% |
87.1% |
|
|
AMD |
14.5% |
12.6% |
11.5% |
10.2% |
15.0% |
17.4% |
12.1% |
|
|
VIA |
0.2% |
0.9% |
1.2% |
0.7% |
0.7% |
0.2% |
0.8% |
|
|
Total |
100.0% |
100.0% |
100.0% |
100.0% |
100.0% |
100.0% |
100.0% |
|
|
Worldwide PC Server Microprocessor Unit Market Share by Vendor, 1Q08-1Q09, 2007-2008 |
||||||||
|
1Q08 |
2Q08 |
3Q08 |
4Q08 |
1Q09 |
2007 |
2008 |
||
|
Intel |
87.0% |
86.2% |
85.6% |
88.1% |
89.3% |
85.7% |
86.6% |
|
|
AMD |
13.0% |
13.8% |
14.4% |
11.9% |
10.7% |
14.3% |
13.4% |
|
|
Total |
100.0% |
100.0% |
100.0% |
100.0% |
100.0% |
100.0% |
100.0% |
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