Intel vs AMD Marketshare | Who’s the Winner

The Computer Industry has been more performance aware than it was ever in history of computing. So being loyal to Intel or AMD is now just a myth. If a processor can perform better in equivalent conditions, then it is preferred regardless of the company who manufactured it. The time period from 2003 to 2009 has time-tested this fact.

AMD ruled the Market with it’s cutting edge technology from 2003 to 2006. When Intel Launched its Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad family of processors, AMD was knocked out of the market. And till date, Intel has retained the throne for the fastest processor on earth that money can buy you. Recently Intel introduced completely revised family of processors under the codename “Nehalem”. With this it has become the favorite of the Industry with sizzling speed, performance and efficiency.

But that alone is not the only factor to be considered while making a decision of Upgrading your system. Now you must be asking me, what else, other than, performance of the processor can be considered as the most crucial factor while upgrading or purchasing a brand new System? And Yes, there is an Answer to it. What matters the most in the industry is not Highest Performance, but Highest Performance per Dollar spent. How is that important can easily be understood.

i7 Core 965 EE costs about 1000 USD for the processor. The Chipset, RAM (Only DDR3 is supported by X58 Chipset which is costly), HDD, GPU, etc altogether can burn a deep hole in your pocket. Now 86% of the performance delivered by i7 core supported system can be achieved from a AMD Phenom series in overclocked mode at just 58% of the cost of i7 Core 965 EE. So if we see the situation Cost wise AMD excels.

As Intel Knocked out AMD in High End Processors, AMD gave more attention towards the Entry Level and the Mid Level systems which covers almost 63% of the market share. This strategic decision has resulted in an overall increase of 2.2 percentage points in the Market Share of AMD. Thus in the lower end market the competition is by and large in favor of AMD as Intel has always been aggressive on processor prices giving AMD an added advantage of performance per Dollar spent after the processor. So AMD still retains the market share for the lower and the mid range computer system affecting Intel’s Market share dearly. As AMD has announced its new 45 NM technology supported processor in response to Intel’s Penryn core processors, it has received a grand welcome from the Retailers. It is expected that this strategic move will again increase the market share of AMD by more than 13% making it double to what it was back in 2008.

Market Research of 2009 by the reputed Analysts suggests that AMD will be able to Capture a market share of around 22 % by the end of 2009 with the launch of Phenom Series Processors and others that are scheduled in 2009 before the Processor Market sees a downfall in the market rate of the current processors offered by Intel. This will prove to be a significant blow on the market share of Intel from its competitor.

Now it is just a matter of time as to what decisions, that are significant for retaining the market share of the company, are taken by Intel as well as AMD to get a competitive advantage over other. Intel wants to market performance while AMD wishes to fight the duel with Cost as the weapon. The current scenario is in favor of AMD in terms of Market share while Intel is favored for Performance.