Intel’s Corp.’s president and COO Paul Otellini said his company estimated the worldwide total available market (TAM) of microprocessors to be about 207 million this year, significantly up from previous years.

According to Intel’s estimates, 152 million processors were shipped in 2002, 169 million of chips were supplied in 2003 and 188 million of central processing units were sold in 2004. The company expects the microprocessor market to reach 207 million units in 2005. The figure includes possible product shipments not only from Intel, but from other PC microprocessor makers, such as AMD, IBM and others.

Just like market research firms, Intel Corp. indicated during Spring Analyst Meeting that the market of mobile PCs is growing very rapidly. Currently about 31% of microprocessors Intel ships are mobile chips and the company expects this figure to grow towards 36% by late 2005.

The updated forecast from IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker lowers growth in total worldwide PC shipments for 2005 to 9.7% as a consequence of delayed recovery in Japan and a cautious outlook in the United States. Total shipments of PCs are expected to reach 195.4 million in 2005 on growth of 9.7% with total shipment value growing by 5.3% to $209 billion. Shipments are projected to reach 273 million in 2009 with a value of $245 billion, according to IDC.

Santa Clara, California-based Intel said it would continue to invest in manufacturing capacities in order to be able to meet the demand for microprocessor products across all segments, including rapidly growing markets, such as China, India, Latin America, Russia and others.