It is certain that, during the fourth quarter of last year, microprocessor and graphic chip and other chip markets have slowly emerged from the economic recession. What spurred the chip markets to rise from the dead is from the recovery of consumer confidence level and increased distribution of net books. This year, most definitely, the chip industries expect a 30 percent growth.
According to IDC, worldwide PC microprocessor shipments in the fourth calendar quarter of 2009 (4Q09) rose modestly, compared to 3Q09, but still achieved all-time record levels for a single quarter, according to IDC's latest PC processor study. Notably, when compared to 4Q08, shipments in 4Q09 rose 31.3 percent. For the full year 2009, total PC processor unit shipments grew 2.5 percent, while revenue declined 7.1 percent to US$28.6 billion.
"Compared to 3Q09, the modest rise in shipments in 4Q09 indicates that the market is returning to normal seasonal patterns," said Shane Rau, director of Semiconductors: Personal Computing research at IDC. "Compared to 4Q08, the huge rise in shipments indicates that the market has put the recession behind it. Both comparisons indicate that the PC industry anticipates improvement in PC end demand in 2010."
Looking at market performance by PC form factor, both mobile PC processors and PC server processors grew well. Mobile PC processors, which include Intel's Atom processors for mini notebooks (also known as net books), increased 11.7 percent in 4Q09 compared to 3Q09. x86 server processors grew 14.1% quarter over quarter. Desktop processors grew 4.8 percent quarter over quarter.
On the client side-mobile and desktop-IDC notes that mainstream and performance processors rose modestly as a percentage of the total mix compared to value processors, which caused the overall market average selling price of processors to rise 6.7 percent quarter over quarter.
"The sequential rise in mainstream and high-end client processors points to the new products, like Core i5 and Athlon II, that Intel and AMD were shipping into the market for the holiday buying season in the fourth quarter," said Rau. "What's interesting there is that consumers were there to buy systems based on them and that OEMs were investing in them for future builds. At the same time, the sequential rise in server processors indicates that server OEMs are starting to see corporations come off the sidelines."
Source:IDC
