Intel regains marketshare from AMD in Q2 2005

Mercury Research published a new report stating AMD lost almost 1 percent market share to Intel in the second quarter of this year. The company believes the higher than expected Xbox console sales were one of the reasons for this.

In Q2 2005 the chip giant accounted for 82.3 percent of all x86 processor shipments, while AMD supplied 16.2 percent of the market. Another 1.5 percent was shipped by the Transmeta and VIA. In the first quarter of this year AMD accounted for 16.9 percent while Intel's share was 81.7 percent.

The research firm believes that moderate drop in AMD’s market share is conditioned by higher sales of Intel’s processors for Microsoft Xbox, which manufacturing will be ceased shortly. Intel confirmed during the most-recent conference call that it had shipped its Celeron processors for Xbox in quantities higher than usually explaining its fallen gross-margins. However, Intel also noted growing sales of value mobile processors as well as “price pressure” on the Intel Xeon processors.

AMD's share in the x86 server processor market grew 51 percent from 7.4 percent in the first quarter to 11.2 percent in the second quarter. This is the first time AMD managed to break the 10 percent barrier in the server market were the most expensive and lucrative processors are sold.

While being down sequentially, AMD’s market share is up annually: in Q2 2004 AMD’s market share was 15.1%, whereas Intel commanded 82.9% of x86 central processing units (CPUs) shipments.

More info at X-bit Labs