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AMD loses sizable market share to Intel in quarter

Advanced Micro Devices lost a chunk of market share to Intel in the first quarter, despite the fact that Intel had to deal with a major chip glitch, according to a report from IHS iSuppli.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor
Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.
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Brooke Crothers
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Advanced Micro Devices lost a considerable share of the chip market to Intel in the first quarter, as the latter rebounded easily from a chipset glitch, according to a report today from IHS iSuppli.

AMD accounted for 10.1 percent of global microprocessor revenue in the first quarter of this year, falling from the 11.8 percent share during from the same period last year and down from 10.9 percent in the fourth quarter, according to the report.

AMD's loss was pretty much Intel's gain. Intel during the first three months of this year claimed 82.6 percent of global microprocessor revenue, up 2 percentage points from the same period last year and an increase of 1.6 points of share from the fourth quarter, iSuppli said.

During the first quarter, Intel discovered an error in the chipset that accompanies the Sandy Bridge processor. At that time, Intel said it would recall and replace about 8 million chipsets. "While such a major recall would represent a major setback for most companies, for giant Intel, it didn't even cause a scratch," wrote Matthew Wilkins, an analyst at the market research firm, in a note.

Revenue, in fact, jumped 25 percent for Intel in the first quarter compared to last year, according to Wilkins.

The good news for AMD is that both companies increased their combined share of the microprocessor market. AMD and Intel held a combined 92.7 percent share of revenue in the first quarter of 2011, up from 92.4 percent in the first quarter of 2010. "This represents good news for the two dominant players, given that the worldwide microprocessor market expanded by about 20 percent in the first quarter of 2011 compared to the same period a year earlier," Wilkins said.

And it's not necessarily smooth sailing ahead for Intel. Wilkins cited the challenge to Intel from media tablets. "Tablets will cut down shipments of netbook PCs this year," he wrote. Netbooks are powered by Intel chips, while tablets like the iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab don't use Intel processors.