Local PC assemblers claiming AMD-based systems are picking up marketshare over their Intel-based rivals, with sales edging up in the third quarter of this year.
The news comes off the back off a recent international Mercury Research report which found AMD had increased its portion of the total processor market from 15.9 per cent to 17.8 per cent in the third quarter of this year compared to Q3, 2004. By contrast, Intel's hold fell from 82.1 per cent to 80.8 per cent over the same period.
Plus Corporation managing director, Nigel Fernandes said sales of its AMD range had increased by up to 20 per cent over the past last quarter.
Lower prices, along with faster processing speed and features, had helped fuel the pick-up, he said.
"Until Intel drops its pricing, AMD is picking up its share against it," Fernandes said. "AMD has a good product line with low costs and most people are accepting it as a good alternative to Intel."
The dual-core Opteron processor and Athlon 64 desktop CPUs were the favourites among the AMD product range, he said.
Xenon Systems managing director, Dragan Dimitrovic, attributed better AMD sales to the vendor's decision to open up its platform to other PC manufacturers.
This had improved the quality of AMD-based systems available, he said.
But while confident that AMD had a stronghold in the high performance cluster (HPC) space, Intel still boasted a stronger base in the business server sector, Dimitrovic said.
"AMD has its pockets where it tends to be the preferable platform but overall that type of HPC business is quite small and it's nowhere near as big as the corporate server business," he said.
Altech Computers national sales manager, Kevin Hartin, said there had been a resurgence of interest with AMD gaming systems and servers.
The distributor produces systems based on both processor platforms.
"In general the market was a bit slow towards the end of the third quarter but AMD certainly held its own forte," he said.
Pioneer Computers managing director, Jeff Li, said the AMD market would continue to increase its performance and potential if it had access to the same marketing initiatives as Intel.
"Intel is pretty strong with its product marketing and AMD could be much stronger in the consumer market but still has a lot to do," he said.
Optima product manager, David Choi, said although it was yet to see a significant increase in AMD sales, the stats provided it with the encouragement to go after new markets that favoured AMD-based solutions.
"Even if our own AMD sales figures do not match with Mercury Research's findings, I am not at all surprised," he said. "I believe AMD has been doing quite well in markets where we don't have a strong presence."
