Add to del.icio.us     Digg this

Jan. 26, 2010

According to market research firm IDC, worldwide CPU unit shipments increased 31.3 percent year-to-year in the fourth quarter of last year.

Those numbers actually represent a new record for the semiconductor industry.

Late yesterday, Apple also reported robust unit PC and notebook shipments.

Though the sequential increase over the third quarter was rather modest, that "indicates that the market is returning to normal seasonal patterns," said Shane Rau, director of semiconductor research at IDC.

"Compared to the fourth quarter of 2008, the steep rise in shipments indicates that the market has put the recession behind it," Rau added.

For the full 2009 year, total CPU unit shipments increased about 2.4 percent, while revenue declined 7.3 percent to about $28.5 billion.

Both mobile PC processors and server CPUs grew robustly. Mobile chips, including Intel's popular Atom processors for Netbooks, increased about 11.8 percent in the fourth quarter over the previous quarter. Server processor shipments grew 14 percent quarter over quarter, while desktop processors grew only 4.7 percent over the prior quarter.

In the fourth quarter of 2009, Intel had about an 80.4 percent market share, a loss of 0.6 percent, while AMD picked up a 19.4 percent share, a gain of 0.72 percent over the third quarter.

By market, for the full year, Intel had a 86.8 percent share in the mobile PC processor segment, a loss of 0.3 percent, while AMD finished with 12.8 percent, a gain of 0.7 percent as well.

For the full 2009 year, Intel had a 79.7 percent share of the PC processor market, a loss of 0.7 percent, as AMD secured a 20.1 percent share, a gain of 0.8 percent.

But in the global server market, AMD actually lost some market share for the full year. Intel ended up with an 89.9 percent share, up from 86.6 percent in 2008, as AMD slipped from 13.2 percent in 2008 to about 10 percent last year.

Last week, AMD launched its long-awaited ATI Radeon™ HD-5670 graphics chip. This is its latest addition to the line-up of graphics products that can support Microsoft's Direct X® 11 gaming and computing software, as well as new innovations such as ATI Eyefinity technology.

Priced at less than $99, the ATI Radeon™ HD 5670 graphics chip enables a superior high-definition gaming experience in the latest Direct X® 11 titles, employs ATI Streaming technology to increase performance in video playback and productivity applications and helps enable the full Microsoft Windows® 7 experience to the next level.

Matt Skynner, v.p. and general manager of the AMD Graphics Group says “in the last week, AMD has celebrated the shipment of its two millionth DirectX 11 graphics chip.

AMD has already enabled DirectX® 11 support for the majority of the PC market and today’s introduction of the ATI Radeon™ HD 5670 graphics card is yet another clear indication of AMD’s commitment to address the strong market demand for DirectX 11-capable graphics cards.”

Source: IDC.

Add to del.icio.us     Digg this