Advanced Micro Devices has reportedly secretly released market share estimations by Mercury Research that guess AMD’s x86 microprocessor market share had reached 21.4% in the Q4 2005, the 5-year high for the company. According to principal analyst for the research firm, the market share rise was conditioned by a successful product portfolio of AMD.

“Basically, I think the fundamental difference between AMD today and AMD two years ago [when the company had a lower market share] is that it has competitive product offerings in every segment. Because [AMD] has something to sell, they're selling it,” said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research, in an interview with eWeek web-site.

AMD’s market share rose to 21.4%, nearly 3% from the Q3’s 17.7%, in the last quarter of 2005, which means that Intel now commands less than 80% of all x86 microprocessor shipments. The new figure is slightly below the all-time-high market share of the world’s second largest maker of x86 processors: 21.8% in Q2 2001. But right now the company has much more competitive product family, which may catalyze further growth.

“AMD”s got a much more complete product line now than they did when they hit their peak in 2001. It is not due solely to desktop shipments AMD gained share in every segment [during the fourth quarter of 2005],” Mr. McCarron added.

According to Mercury Research AMD had 24.3% market share in desktops, commanded shipments of 16.4% of server processors and supplied 15.1% notebook central processing units. Overall, AMD claimed it had a market share of 18.2% for 2005, up almost 2.5 points, citing the Mercury Research figures.