Posted on Sunday, June 17 2007 @ 2:20 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
The research firm also states that AMD's share of the total workstation market dropped from 3.6% in Q2 2006 to 2% in Q1 2007. ARS Technica reports:
Bloomberg reports a similar story in the server segment, where AMD rose from 15.2 percent marketshare in the first quarter of 2006 to 22.2 percent in Q4 of that year but slipped by 7 percent in the first quarter of 2007. The long-term relevance of these numbers, however, will depend on how quickly and aggressively AMD brings its next-generation Barcelona to market.
Cyclical turns in the ongoing battle between AMD and Intel are nothing new, and this isn't the first time that a relevant segment's marketshare has turned first one way and then the other as the two companies slugged it out. AMD is still giving strong guidance on its upcoming product refreshes, and the company's design wins and market achievements since it launched the Opteron in 2003 under similar circumstances do give it some additional believability when discussing expectations for Barcelona. Simultaneously, however, AMD's past successes with K8 mean the company has that much more riding on a successful, on-time Barcelona launch. AMD continues to maintain it can deliver the goods—when we spoke with company spokesman Ken Hughes today, he reiterated AMD's plans for a Barcelona launch this summer followed by broad availability in Q3, with Budapest and Agena (workstation and desktop) to follow this year as well.
