Despite of holding performance crown in high-end microprocessors segment, chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices still benefited from sales of low-cost central processing units according to a recent market research report released by Mercury Research company.

Market study for Q2 2004 released recently by Mercury Research claims that market leader Intel Corp. lost a little bit less that one percentage point of market share, while the world’s second largest manufacturer of microprocessors gained a half of a point during the second quarter. Intel now commands 82.7% of the market, while AMD occupied 15.5% of the market. The remaining 1.8% are held by smaller chip designers like VIA Technologies and Transmeta Corp..

Both leading chipmakers practically did not change market share figures on annual basis. Intel held 82.6% of the market in Q2 2003, while AMD held 15.6% of the PC processor market during the same period last year.

Dean McCarron, principal analyst for Mercury Research, told CNET News.com web-site that there has been a big shift towards lower-end products in the second quarter, which was not a big surprise, as the market tended towards both lower sales and lower average prices in the second quarter. Market research firm believes that AMD’s market share gains should be attributed to the general trend towards low-cost microprocessors, the market where AMD has been always strong.

Even though market research company claims that AMD’s market share increases are driven by entry-level products, it should be noted that since last year AMD has started to supply AMD Opteron and AMD Athlon 64 products to the retail channel as well as to leading makers of personal computers, workstations and servers, such as HP, IBM, Gateway, Fujitsu-Siemens and a number of others. This has impact on AMD's margins and profitability.

PC processor market share figures include desktop, notebook and server processors. But desktop processors, whose shipments outnumber the other two categories combined, have the biggest effect on market share.