AMD’s Marketshare Drops As Sales Of x86 Decline

Over the last few months, sales in the x86 market has been on a decline and in the last quarter (Q3 2012) sales were at their worst since Q1 2011. Across the globe shipments of x86 CPUs has taken a dive and the third quarter boost that was expected by the usual flow of back to school purchases (both by the schools directly or home users) never happened as expected and delivery was 4% lower than the previous quarter.

Things are even worse for AMD and their overall marketshare in the x86 market has plummeted from 18.8% where they were last year to 16.1% at the end of Q3 2012. On the flip-side, Intel saw a rise in their share of the market from 80.6% to 83.3% which comes down to the new lines of Core Processors based on the Ivy Bridge architecture, taking a bit back on what they lost earlier in the year to AMD.

One of the major factors in the decline of x86 sales comes back to the mobile device markets and the increase in popularity of tablets like the iPad and the new Windows based tablets that are appearing with Windows 8 now in the limelight. Pending the uptake of Windows 8 on the desktop platform analysts predict that there could be a rejuvenating boost for the x86 market which will be eagerly awaited by all major chip makers.

Source: Source 1