AMD grabs "impressive" market share from Intel in Q1

It's good to see AMD becoming more competitive against Intel and for the first time in a year, managing to win back market share, says iSuppli, a market research firm.

Intel lost 2.5 points in market share to 79.1 per cent, its first decline after a year of gains. AMD gained 2.3 points to 12.8 per cent.

Matthew Wilkins, Suppli’s principal analyst for compute platforms research, said that AMD's gain was an "impressive feat given the economic downturn and the weakness in the PC and server markets, which caused global microprocessor revenue in the first quarter to decline by 20.6 percent to $6.9 billion, down from $8.6 billion during the same period in 2008."

However, both companies lost revenues because of shrinking demand for microprocessors. The 2009 microprocessor market is forecast to be $28.6 billion, down 15.8 per cent from $34 billion in 2008.