AMD Server Market Share Increases 50 Percent

A particularly strong second quarter propelled Advanced Micro Devices past the 10% barrier in x86 server processor market share for the first time.

AMD saw its share of the x86 server processor market grow 51% in the quarter, from 7.4% to 11.2%, according to analyst firm Mercury Research.

"This particular move was very dramatic," says Dean McCarron, an analyst with Mercury Research. "It indicates that AMD's work in developing the market for Opteron has been successful … Clearly, one or more of their customers was taking substantially more product in the quarter than they had previously."

Although Intel remains dominate in the market with 88.8% share, "you have to keep in mind that five years ago Intel's number was 100%," McCarron says. "I'm sure that AMD's success is not lost on Intel."

Earlier this month AMD reported that its server processor revenue in the second quarter, ended June 26, increased 89% from the first quarter, and overall processor revenue increased 38% compared to the second quarter of 2004. The processor sales improvement helped push AMD to net income of $11 million on revenue of $1.3 billion in the second quarter."This is a continuation of our strategy of the past two and half to three years and we're starting to see everything blossom at this time," says Pat Patla, director of server and workstation marketing for AMD.

Patla says in the first half of 2005 AMD has seen a significant expansion in the number of platforms by tier one server manufacturers that utilize the Opteron processor.

"The growth in the quarter is on scale with the growth targets we have had, and we don't feel this is a one-time blip in the measurement of data," he says.