Toshiba Corp., one of the world’s leading supplier of notebooks, plans to start using microprocessors from Advanced Micro Devices in a move to reduce costs of its machines and grab a larger market share in the markets where affordable machines are popular.

A report from MarketWatch web-site suggests that Toshiba will be using AMD Turion 64 family processors in about 20% of its laptops sold in Europe and the U.S., which should allow the firm to reduce parts-procurement costs by at least 10%. The move may allow Toshiba to better compete against companies like Acer and Fujitsu Siemens in Europe, as the two companies currently offer much broader range of notebooks than Toshiba and may appeal to price-conscious buyers.

Given that AMD currently sells not only processors, but may also supply chipsets and graphics processing units, Toshiba’s decision may indicate that the company has been looking for second sources for all base components of its machines, as currently the Japan-based notebook maker relies on microprocessors from Intel Corp. and graphics chips from Nvidia Corp.

“With PCs becoming commodity products, there seems to be a new way of thinking that competition should be introduced even in procurement of such core parts like processors as long as there are no major differences in product specifications. This could be a message that an era in which Intel took the lion's share of microprocessor profits as the king of PC chips is over,” Macquarie Securities analyst Yoshihiro Shimada said in an interview with Reuters news-agency.

Dell Inc. was a major win for AMD last year, as this was the largest maker of personal computers, who did not use chips by the Sunnyvale, California-based chipmaker. Nevertheless, there are a number of notebook makers who still do not use processors by the world’s second largest maker, including Apple, IBM/Lenovo (in ThinkPad lineup), Panasonic, Sony and some others.