We recognised from a Mercury Research report that market share of AMD increased quarter-on-quarter in Q1 2003, whereas Intel lost a couple of percents of the x86 CPU market last quarter on a sequential basis.

In the first quarter this year 81.7% of x86 CPU market were occupied by Intel Corporation, Advanced Micro Devices had 16.6% and minor players like VIA Technologies and Transmeta Corporation commanded 1.7% of the market. In the Q1 2002 the shares were 80.8%, 18.2% and 1% respectively, so, annually AMD lost 1.6% of the market, whereas its rivals strengthened their positions. On a sequential basis the situation is better for Sunnyvale, California-based company since it managed to expand its market presence by 2.8%, meanwhile its arch-rival Intel lost the same part of the market, Mercury Research states. AMD expects to continue fighting back market share from the Santa Clara-based chip-giant.

Keep in mind that the figures above include shipments of microprocessors for Microsoft XBOX console. Without them, Intel’s share would be 80.9%, while AMD’s would be 17.3% according to Mercury. The research firm does not say a word on decline or rise in the number of CPUs shipped in the first quarter 2003 compared to the first quarter of 2002.  

Overall, all CPU firms are doing quite well and I do not expect significant changes in the market throughout this year. Keeping in mind that AMD’s inventory level represents less than 4 weeks of sales we can be sure that the company has all the chances to continue expanding its presence in desktops. In contrast, last year AMD had a lot of lower-end processors in stock and after demand for PCs slumped dramatically in late Q2 and Q3, AMD had to perform numerous inventory clear-outs what led to lowering revenues, losses and also market share reduction.