After Intel Corporation released one of its most competitive CPU families in history this Spring, the company’s market share started to improve, while the share of its main rival declined in the third quarter, according to a report from Mercury Research.

Share of Intel Corporation in the whole x86 market reached 82.6% in the third quarter 2003, AMD accounted only 15.8% of the market, a 0.8% sequential decrease, but 3.4% increase over the same period a year ago. Intel saw a sequential uptick of 1.2%, but experienced a drop of 3.3% of its share from 85.9% in the third quarter last year. Other firms participating in the market – such as VIA Technologies and Transmeta Corporation – only managed to ship 1.6% on all x86 CPUs produced in the Q3 2003. The figures do not include the processors Intel shipped to Microsoft for the XBOX console.

Intel’s market share increased not only because of high-performance Pentium 4 microprocessors and low-cost Celeron CPUs, but also as a result of rising shipments of various notebook computers that accounted 19% of all x86 unit shipments, according to CNet.

Even though the figures of the whole x86 market include server processors in addition to mobile and desktop chips, we do not have anything to add in regards server market shares.