The decline in PC chip shipments may be slowing but Netbook processor deliveries were off 33 percent, while Advanced Micro Devices gained on Intel, IDC said.
In the first calendar quarter of 2009, worldwide PC microprocessor shipments fell 10.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2008, compared with a 17 percent decline from the third quarter to the fourth quarter, according to IDC.
AMD gained on Intel in the first quarter. Intel garnered a 77.3 percent unit market share, a loss of 4.7 percent, while AMD had a 22.3 percent share, a gain of 4.6 percent. AMD gained in the mobile and desktop PC markets, IDC said.
Overall, shipments were down, though the rate of decline may be slowing. "The PC processor market continued to reflect significant decline in end demand for most of 1Q09," said Shane Rau, director of Semiconductors: Personal Computing research at IDC. "However, some inventory replenishment by (PC makers) at the end of the quarter helped to slow the decline and bring the quarter in at a level only slightly worse than typical seasonal decline."
IDC noted that demand from PC suppliers picked up towards the end of the quarter but the market researcher cautioned that the demand was due to PC manufacturers "replenishing their inventories rather than reflecting a return of solid end demand and return to market normalcy."
Unit shipments dropped 13 percent from the first quarter of 2008 to the first quarter of 2009.
Intel's shipments of Atom processors for Netbooks plummeted 33 percent in the first quarter of 2009 compared to the fourth quarter, indicating that Netbook suppliers held significant inventory of Atom processors coming into the new year, according to IDC.
Worldwide PC processor shipments fell sharply in the fourth quarter of 2008, though Intel's Atom chip bucked the trend, according to new data from IDC.
In the fourth quarter, processor unit shipments declined 17 percent quarter over quarter and 11.4 percent year over year, while market revenue declined 18 percent over the previous quarter and 22.2 percent compared to the year-earlier period to $6.78 billion, IDC said.
"The decline in PC processor unit shipments in the fourth quarter was the worst sequential decline since IDC started tracking processor shipments in 1996," said Shane Rau, a chip analyst at IDC.
(Credit:
IDC)
For the full year, total PC processor unit shipments grew 10 percent, while revenue grew 0.9 percent to $30.8 billion.
Intel's Atom processor is proving to be recession-proof. The popular Netbook chip prevented overall unit decline percentages from going above 20 percent. Without Atom, worldwide PC processor unit shipments would have been significantly worse: declining 21.7 percent quarter over quarter and 21.6 percent year over year, IDC said.
Intel grabbed an 81.9 percent unit market share in the fourth quarter, up 1.1 percentage points over the previous quarter. AMD fell to 17.7 percent, a loss of less than 1 percentage point. For the full year, Intel had an 80.3 percent unit market share, a gain of nearly 3 percentage points, while AMD's share dropped to 19.2 percent, a loss of 3.1 percentage points.
In 2008, Intel gained 4.8 percentage points in mobile PC processor market share, garnering 87.1 percent of the market. AMD finished with a 12.1 percent share of the mobile PC processor market, a loss of 5.3 percentage points.
Looking ahead, IDC said demand remains so weak that it expects sequential processor unit shipment to decline in both the first and second quarters of 2009.
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