Third Quarter of 2009 Shows Increase in Intel Market Share

With the increasing competition in netbook and laptop sales by different companies, there has also been a corresponding rise in demands for microprocessor chips to run the system units. Laptop and netbook chips have been in high demand by over 22 percent when compared to 2008 orders. It is notable that the chips for mobile units, like netbooks and laptops, are ever-increasing while the chips for PC desktops and servers are decreasing.

At Mercury Research alone, up to 100 million units of PC processors were shipped in the third quarter of 2009, according to their principal analyst, Dean McCarron. The third quarter in 2009 was still higher than the record set in the third quarter in 2008.

To date, Intel upped its microprocessor chip shipments beating even contenders like Advanced Micro Devices (or AMD) for the third quarter of 2009. These two leaders in chip microprocessor production have always competed for sales over the years.

The 2009 third quarter has seen an increase by 81.2 percent as compared to 2008 third quarter’s sales in PC microprocessors sold by Intel. On AMD’s side, it only increased by 17.7 percent in 2009 as compared to the third quarter of 2008. In 2008 Intel was holding an 81.5 percent of the market share, while AMD held 18.5 percent. Via Technologies held 1.1 percent of the market share in 2008 which fell to 0.7 percent in 2009.

The increase in Intel’s microprocessor sales has been attributed to the different kinds of products that the chip makers are offering. For instance, AMD offers more desktop PC products while Intel has a bigger market in terms of products of the mobile kind. Because of this shift to mobile units, the fourth quarter holds plans for Intel to shift from the 45 nanometer process down to the 32 nanometer process to enhance PC circuitry that will be efficient in power as well as faster processing. Because of the third quarter results, AMD is also rethinking its strategy to shift from 65 nanometer process down to the 45 nanometer process.

Over the years, considering the more than three-quarters market share that Intel has had in the microprocessor chip manufacturing market, AMD is only looking at maintaining its conservative share of the market. So far, status quo has been maintained for all the manufacturing companies in terms of quality and performance, what is notable at this point is the shift from stationary units to more mobile products.