by Anton Shilov
08/02/2007 | 11:20 PM
Advanced Micro Devices reclaimed the lost market share in the second quarter following substantial collapse in Q1 2007, according to recently released figures by Mercury Research. The analyst firm believes that AMD had managed to overcome its inventory issues and come up with competitive product mix during seasonally weak second quarter, which was the primary driver of its success.
Apparently, AMD managed to boost its x86 microprocessor unit market share by 4 percent points in Q2 2007 to 22.9% from 18.7% in Q1 2007. Intel Corp.’s market share is still dominant and is times higher compared to AMD’s, 76.3%. Meanwhile Via Technologies and Transmeta Corp. still command 0.8% of x86 microprocessor market without any signs of rebound.
“The market demand in general was pretty strong and to be honest, no one understands why this particular second quarter was this strong. All the indications were for a low forecast and this quarter just blew those forecasts away,” said Dean McCarron, the head of Mercury Research.
The PC segment of the market was up 12.2% compared to the first quarter of the year and climbed 15.2% compared to the second quarter of 2006, according to the report cited by eWeek web-site.
Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research, said that AMD made and sold-in too many chips in Q4 2006 in anticipation of a strong Q1, but due to the fact that its were unable to sell those products rapidly enough, its market share collapsed. But proper inventory management, competitive product mix and relatively low prices helped AMD to rebound to the level of Q3 2006, which is a positive news for the chipmaker.
“Basically, AMD had an overstated share in the fourth quarter and an understated share of the market in the first quarter,” Mr. McCarron is reported to have said.
Apart from the long-awaited quad-core AMD Opteron roll-out and the launch of Intel’s new multi-processor Xeon platform, there will be no significant product introductions in the third quarter and it is hard to estimate whether AMD manages to stop Intel from gaining market share going forward. Back in the past new product introductions slowed down sales of AMD and caused market share drops.
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