AMD gains ground on Intel in chip wars

Chip maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) gained some ground on rival Intel in the lucrative microprocessor market during the first quarter, market research iSuppli said late Tuesday.

AMD's share of global microprocessor market revenue in the first quarter rose by 2.2 percentage points compared to the same time last year to 13 percent, iSuppli said. Meanwhile, Intel's microprocessor sales dropped by 0.7 percentage points to a 79.7 percent share of the market.

The figures show that AMD is growing its market share at the expense of Intel, iSuppli said.

"AMD's PC microprocessor product portfolio has become much stronger during the last year, particularly on the desktop side," said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst and iSuppli, in a report.

The market research company also noted that microprocessor prices appear to have stabilized, a sign that price wars between AMD and Intel have abated.

A portion of AMD's first quarter market share increase came from smaller microprocessor suppliers, iSuppli said. The report results included all kinds of microprocessors, not just the x86 processors AMD and Intel make for computers.

In fact, Intel and AMD accounted for 92.7 percent of total microprocessor revenue in the first quarter, up 1.4 percentage points from the same time last year, iSuppli reported.