Sun Rises, Intel Turns The Tables On AMD

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jan 21, 10:35PM EST

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Sun Microsystems (SUNW) is planning to use Intel (INTC) chips in its servers. As if things were not already bad enough for AMD (AMD), which is Sun’s exclusive provider now.

How times change. For the last two years, AMD has boasted every time it picked up a new client from IBM to Dell. It share of the server market seemed to grow each quarter, and it now holds about 25% of the market with Intel holding the balance.

But, the cost to AMD has been considerable. As it has cut prices, its margins have fallen. The company recently warned that Q4 results would be disappointing. Intel has already reported mediocre results for the quarter ending December 31.

The market may be sensing the AMD’s market share increases are a thing of the past Since the beginning of the year, Intel’s shares are up over 2% and AMD’s are down 9%. Over a period of two years, AMD’s shares have done better than its larger rival, but the gap between the performance of the two stocks was at its widest a year ago and has now narrowed considerably.

AMD is slipping.

Douglas A McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.