New figures from iSuppli Corp point to a halt in Intel Corporations microprocessor market share gains over smaller rival AMD throughout most of 2008. According to the market research firm, Intel’s share of the MPU market peaked at 81.6% in the fourth quarter of 2008, but declined 2.5% in the first quarter of 2009 to a still dominant 79.1%. AMD saw its share rise by 2.3% in the first quarter, giving the fabless company a 12.8% global market share.
“After losing share to Intel on a sequential basis during three out of four quarters in 2008, AMD managed to reverse the trend in the first quarter of 2009,” said Matthew Wilkins, iSuppli’s Principal Analyst for Compute Platforms research. “AMD increased its allocation of global microprocessor revenue due to strong performances in each area of its microprocessor portfolio, particularly in its Notebook products. This was an impressive feat given the economic downturn and the weakness in the PC and server markets, which caused global microprocessor revenue in the first quarter to decline by 20.6 percent to $6.9 billion, down from $8.6 billion during the same period in 2008.”
iSuppli also said that the MPU market would decline by 15.8% in 2009, reaching US$28.6 billion in revenue, down from US$34 billion in 2008, due to the current economic recession.