Intel expanded its already considerable lead in the global microprocessor market during the second quarter of 2011.
In Q2, Santa Clara accounted for 81.8% of global microprocessor revenue, up 1.1 percentage points from 80.7% in the second quarter of 2010. In contrast, AMD lost 1.1% in share during the same period.
IHS analyst Matthew Wilkins attributed Intel’s increase in market share to a recovery in the PC market and strong shipments of Santa Clara’s new Sandy Bridge chips.
“Intel in the second quarter benefited from the combination of a recovery in PC demand and strong shipment growth for its new Sandy Bridge line of microprocessors,” explained Wilkins.
“Strong corporate PC sales were particularly beneficial to Intel, as the enterprise computing segment has been outperforming the consumer market.”
According to Wilkins, Intel “aggressively” increased production of its Sandy Bridge line of microprocessors, with the corporation describing its strategy as the fastest ramp-up of any product in the company’s history.
Wilkin’s also noted that while Intel was clearly the star of the microprocessor market on a year-over-year basis, AMD’s second-quarter performance “appears better” when using a sequential comparison.
Indeed, AMD’s share of the microprocessor revenue in the second quarter rose to 10.4%, up 0.3% from 10.1% in the first quarter. This compares to Intel’s 0.7 percentage point decline from 82.6% in the first quarter.
“AMD’s strong increase in shipments of its Fusion microprocessors helped the company to halt the sequential decrease in shipments that it has suffered for the last three quarters.
“[In addition, the] results were powered up by Fusion microprocessors, which delivers improved computational performance [and] provides PCs with DirectX 11 graphics capability without the need for a discrete graphics card,” Wilkins added.
