AMD loses share to Intel in Q3

Fueled by rising notebook/netbook sales, Intel boosted its share of the CPU market from 80% to 81.2% according to Mercury Research. Meanwhile AMD's share dropped from 18.8% in Q2'08 to 17.7% in Q3. One year ago AMD owned 23% of the overall CPU market. 

According to the Mercury Research report, notebook CPU sales outpaced desktop CPUs for the first time, with mobile processor sales surging by 27%. The increase in notebook CPU sales benefited Intel more than AMD; Intel has a more robust line of mobile processors including their recently released Atom CPU line. To counter Atom, AMD is rumored to be working on their own CPU for netbooks that may launch as soon as this quarter.

Despite the bad news in the economy, the CPU market as a whole grew by 13% during the quarter, although sales reportedly declined significantly in September.

One bright spot for AMD was servers. AMD posted a "modest" gain in share in the server space. AMD is expected to unveil their first 45-nm Shanghai server CPUs later this quarter.