The first quarter processor market: Intel, AMD rock solid

IDC today announced the global PC microprocessor market statistics report for the first quarter of 2011. In terms of vendor share, Intel and AMD have maintained an astonishing stability in the overall situation, with only slight changes in different areas.

In the first three months of this year, global PC microprocessor shipments increased by 7.4% year-on-year and by 1.6% month-on-month. IDC pointed out in the report that the first quarter is often off-season, but one extra week this year will surely benefit from shipments. The shipments of Intel and AMD from the manufacturers have all increased significantly. This is especially the first full quarter of the Sandy Bridge and Fusion APU. It also exceeded the 50% shipment share of the integrated graphics core processor for the first time.

The market share of Intel, AMD, and VIA all stayed at 80.8%, 18.9%, and 0.2% this quarter without any change.

In the desktop area, Intel gave a 0.1% share to AMD, which is currently 72.4% and 27.4% respectively.

In the mobile sector, Intel won 0.2% to 86.3%, AMD lost 0.1% to 13.4%, and VIA took 0.3%.

In the server space, Intel lost 0.3% again, but it is still as high as 93.9%. AMD has only gained 6.1% after harvest.

IDC expects that total microprocessor shipments for the full year of 2011 will increase by 10.3%, which is 0.2% higher than previously estimated figures, and that market revenue will be close to US$43 billion, an increase of 17.6%. In addition, IDC also for the first time predicted the shipment of PC microprocessors of different architectures. It is believed that by 2015, the ARM architecture will occupy more than 13% of the market.