Home > News and Articles |
By Kirk Ladendorf AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Monday, November 09, 2009 The global market for personal computer processor chips rebounded strongly in the third quarter as consumers in emerging markets, particularly China, increased their purchases of low-cost netbook computers, according to a report released today by market research firm IDC. PC processor unit sales increased to about 88 million for the quarter, narrowly topping the record set in the same quarter a year ago. Shipments rebounded strongly from the depressed levels of the first half of the year, with a 23 percent jump in unit shipments from the second quarter. Revenue was up 14 percent, to $7.4 billion. ''The processor market is recovering,'' said Shane Rau, IDC's director of chip market research. ''Compared with where the market was at the beginning of 2009, PC processors have come back remarkably strong.'' The big growth driver appears to have been Intel Corp.'s Atom processor, which is the most common processor found in low-cost netbook computers, the fastest-growing segment of the PC industry. The Atom family is developed at Intel's engineering center in Austin. The rapid growth in netbook sales is particularly strong in China, where government economic stimulus spending appears to be fueling consumer sales. Because the Atom costs PC makers less than $30 per chip on average, far less that typical PC processors, the rise in Atom sales means that the average selling price for the whole market declined. That average price dropped by 7 percent in the quarter, IDC said. ''The emerging regions are driving the market right now, and they want low-priced processors,'' Rau said. ''The Atom is well-timed for a recession.'' Rau added that 2010 could see a return to stronger sales for higher-priced, higher-performance processors. IDC projects that global unit sales of PC processors will increase by 1.5 percent this year, to well over 300 million. But the IDC report is cautious about the outlook for early next year, indicating that there could be an inventory correction in China after the holiday sales season. Mobile computer sales led the third-quarter recovery, with a rebound of 35.7 percent; desktop sales expanded by 11.4 percent and server processors grew 12.2 percent. Intel Corp. claimed an 81.1 percent share of worldwide processor sales, while Advanced Micro Devices Inc. had an 18.7 percent share. Intel led AMD in sales of desktop processors, 72.2 percent to 27.4 percent; in sales of mobile processors, 88 percent to 11.9 percent; and in sales of server chips, 90.4 percent to 9.6 percent. |