AMD Taking Back Market Share from Intel (AMD, INTC)

The worst may have been seen in the market share war for Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD) against Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC).  A report from late yesterdayfrom iSuppli said that the quarterly growth sequential gains came to an end in the first quarter of this year.  That is good news for AMD, but the issue of falling revenue persists at both processor and chip makers.

Intel lost 2.5 points in market share with its portion of global revenue declining to 79.1% when compared to a reading of 81.6% in the fourth quarter of 2008.

AMD gained share at a nearly equivalent rate, according to the report.  AMD’s market share rose 2.3 points to 12.8% when compared to 10.5% in the fourth quarter of 2008.

AMD had lost market share to rival Intel three out of four quarters in 2008 on a sequential basis. iSuppli noted that this was due to strong performances in each area of its microprocessor portfolio, particularly in its notebooks.  Because of drops in more expensive systems, the total global microprocessor revenue in the first quarter fell by 20.6% to $6.9 billion from $8.6 billion during the same period in 2008.

Intel’s gain in market share from the end of 2007 was from 78% up to 81.6% at the peak.  The unfortunate aspect for AMD, and for Intel for that matter, is that both companies saw revenue declines.  As high end servers and high-end PC spending trends are falling victim to sub-$500 PC’s, netbooks, and then also the  “good enough performance” trends, that is expected.

The full report from iSuppli is here.

AMD is trading up at $4.83 in early trading after a $4.75 close on Tuesday, and its 52-week trading range is $1.62 to $7.94.

JON C. OGG
JUNE 10, 2009