In a run-up to the launch of the ATI Radeon HD 4890, we heard a lot of rumors coming from Taiwan about the lack of AMD 7-series chipsets, and how sales of AMD CPUs are taking off in a really big way etc. The most radical bit of information came from one of Top 3 motherboard vendors, who said to us in confidence that they went from 8% AMD 92% Intel to a 70:30 mix with the tendency of going 60:40 in Intel's favor during Q2.
Naturally, we expected that the market will react positively after all the good PR AMD received with various overclocking records. Once more, it was proven that power users are the ones that will build up the sales of a platform, regardless what some uninformed technical and sales executives in AMD claimed. Selling canola oil was one thing, but computing components are whole another ballgame.
According to the preliminary data received from Mercury Research, AMD took 20.9% of word-wide CPU market share, with Intel dropping to 78.2% from the heights of 82.1% in 4Q'2008. AMD took 3.9 percent in a single quarter, and our sources inside the company are telling us that April really took off in EMEA and North American regions.
Things are looking bright for AMD, now everything is about execution. If AMD does not fail its overclocking and enthusiast crowd, the company could see rebirth of their positive karma in late Jerry Sanders times, just before Hector took over. Does anyone remember the Mobile Barton 2500+ and what effect that tiny CPU had on the whole CPU market?
