San Mateo, Calif. – A strong year for microprocessor shipments that
saw 17 percent growth tailed off during the fourth quarter, according IDC.
The fourth quarter of 2010 was down less than 1 percent year over
year. The 17 percent yearly growth generated $36.3 billion in revenue, a 26.7
percent increase.
Shane Rau, director of semiconductors, personal computing, for
IDC, said the revenue jump was due to higher microprocessor average selling
prices. This was driven by fewer Atom processors being sold as netbooks fell
out of favor with consumers. Instead an increased number of higher-powered
mobile processors were sold, he said.
Intel remained the dominant microprocessor vendor for the year,
grabbing 80.7 percent of the market, up 1.1 percent from 2009. That 1.1 percent
came from AMD, which ended the year with 19 percent of the market. VIA
Technologies took 0.3 percent.
In the mobile process space for the fourth quarter Intel had 86.1
percent of the market, up 0.2 percent, compared with AMD which finished with
13.5 percent, down 0.2 percent. VIA barely registered with less than 0.1
percent, according to IDC.
