AMD marketshare drops to 16.1 percent in declining x86 market

Last year the chip designer still had a marketshare of 18.8 percent in the x86 market, but in Q3 2012 saw its marketshare decline to just 16.1 percent. Intel on the other hand saw its marketshare rise from 80.6 percent to 83.3 percent in the same timeframe. The other 0.6 percent belongs to VIA.

The data above comes from the latest x86 processor report from Mercury Research, which notes that last quarter was the second worst quarter for the x86 processor market since Q1 2011. Global shipments of x86 processors declined at rates not seen in over a decade, the third quarter is usually strong due to back-to-school PC purchases, but this year x86 CPU shipments fell by 4 percent compared to the second quarter.

“AMD took more of the hit than Intel did. They both experienced declines,” McCarron said. “AMD was simply hit by what OEMs saw in the markets… and hitting the brakes.”

Mobile chip shipments reduced by a mid-single digit percentage range for AMD and Intel, according to the research. Intel’s gains on AMD mostly came in desktops, where volume shipments of new Core processors based on the Ivy Bridge microarchitecture and aggressive pricing may have helped it. Intel launched the first Ivy Bridge chips for desktops in April, and followed with Core processors for laptops.

The PC market is in decline with more people buying tablets like the iPad for computing. According to IDC, worldwide PC shipments in the third quarter dropped by 8.6 percent compared to the same quarter a year earlier. A new category of light laptops called ultrabooks did not provide a spark to PC shipments during the third quarter, and analysts have said the PC sector could get a boost from Microsoft’s latest Windows 8 OS, which became available late last month.