AMD beats Intel on desktop shipments. Or does it?

According to Mercury Research, AMD made a tiny gain on Intel's market share over the last six months, but the chip giant is still by far the biggest player in the x86 market. But another research company, Current Analysis, has a sharply different view of desktop processor market. The IDG News Service reported that desktop PCs with AMD chips outsold processors from Intel in one week during April.

Mercury Research said Intel has 83.6 per cent of the market, while AMD has a 14.9 per cent share, up slightly on the same time last year. What is left of the market is carved up between Via Technologies and Transmeta.

Both AMD and Intel recently reported good sales figures.

A Mercury spokesman said that there was a small increase in market share for AMD - that was because of a slight upward trend in white-box PCs, desktops, servers and laptops from system integrators.

AMD did better in the server market, but Intel continues to dominate in this area with most of the world's servers running on its chips. µ