Intel suffered but AMD surged in 2006, iSuppli says
section: common, for your questions: KezNews forum, 16.3.2007
It was a tale of two companies in the semiconductor industry in 2006, with leading chip supplier Intel suffering a revenue decline, while rival AMD nearly doubled its sales, according to iSuppli.
"For US microprocessor giant Intel, 2006 was the worst of times, as its global semiconductor revenue dropped by 11.1% from 2005," said Dale Ford, vice president of market intelligence for iSuppli. "The revenue decline, which was due to Intel's bleak performance in its core PC microprocessor and flash-memory businesses, erased nearly all of the company's sales gains from its strong year in 2005. Intel's 2006 revenue of US$31.5 billion was less than half a percentage point higher than its sales in 2004."
"For Intel's smaller US rival, AMD, 2006 was the best of times as it achieved a whopping 91.6% increase in revenue for the year, partly due to a major acquisition, but also because of strong gains in microprocessor market share," Ford added.
This robust increase in revenue caused AMD's ranking to rise to eighth place in 2006, up seven positions from the 15th rank in 2005.
The divergent performances of Intel and AMD came during a 2006 when global semiconductor industry revenue rose by 9.3% to reach US$260.2 billion, up from US$237.98 billion in 2005. This is slightly higher than the 9% growth iSuppli predicted in its preliminary market share estimate compiled in November and released in early December.
Intel in 2006 faced hard times in its microprocessor and flash-memory businesses, which together accounted for 83% of total company revenue last year. The company's combined microprocessor and flash revenue in 2006 fell to its lowest level since 2003 as Intel faced rising competitive pressure in those markets. The revenue decline resulted in Intel's market share falling to 12.1 percent, its lowest level since before 2000.
Meanwhile, AMD in 2006 gained PC microprocessor market share at Intel's expense. AMD's PC microprocessor revenue rose by 35.5% in 2006 and its market share in that product segment increased to 16.1%, up 5 percentage points from 11.1% in 2005.
AMD's revenue also was boosted substantially by its acquisition of graphics chip seller ATI Technologies in 2006.
Looking beyond Intel and AMD, 2006 was a banner year for the leading pure-play memory chip suppliers.
source:
digitimes.com
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Comments(6)
intel is still bigger. and amd is still behind in the processor battle - they are still
making chips at 90nm while intel has been making 65nm chips for the greater part of 2006.
intel is ahead in least power usage and best performance with the core 2 duo and quad
processors. speaking of quad processors, amd hasn't even come up with one yet. there goes
that whole amd-fanboi article.
if you can call 2 dual core processors on a single cpu "quad core".
i am reserving judgment until amd's "native" quad cores come out. its suppose to be
more than just 4 athlon 64s on a single silicon. should be many optimizations and a large
shared cache as well.
i call 4 cores on a single die a quad core, yes. i call amd knee jerk response, the 4x4 a
bad joke. double barreled flame-thrower, hotter, slower and more expensive.
when taking into consideration amd memory controller is on the chip and intel's is not
,you if you delve a little deeper will find amd compares quite favorably in power
consumption. intel has until the core 2 duo with emphasis on the 2 performed miserably
against amd for the past 3 years running. the reason for their loss in market share.i am
using intel right now and like it, but they are not that far ahead of amd.
not that far ahead? considering a 300$ intel chip beats the snot out of anything amd has
at the moment, and the cheapest core 2 duo can easily be overclocked to achieve the same
goal, i'd say they're quite a bit ahead. also, if you check the numbers for the old core
cpu, it is also faster clock by clock than the k8. now, i want amd to do good, for the
consumer's sake, so they better get that k10 out the door soon, and it better be as good
as they say. penryn and nehalem are not too far off.
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Revenue doesn't matter
By progrip on 17.03.2007 - 02:03