Global PC microprocessor shipments in the first quarter of 2011 grew by 7.4% year-on-year and 1.6% sequentially, according to a new study by IDC.
The report highlighted that the unit shipments for the full year 2011 will grow 10.3% compared to 2010 and market revenue for the year will grow 17.6% to approximately $43bn.
IDC personal computing research semiconductors director Shane Rau said the first quarter, which is usually weak, was strong in terms of unit shipments, but benefitted from an extra calendar week.
"Both Intel and AMD grew unit shipments sequentially, which indicates some decent strength in their new platforms. Due to the first full quarter shipping their Sandy Bridge and Fusion microprocessors with integrated graphics processors (IGP), processors with IGP grew to slightly over 50% of market shipments for the first time," Rau said.
In the first quarter of 2011, PC processor vendor shares overall were stable. Intel earned 80.8% unit market share and AMD earned 18.9%, both flat compared to fourth quarter of 2010. VIA Technologies earned 0.2%.
By form factor, Intel earned 86.3% share in the mobile PC processor segment, a gain of 0.2%, AMD finished with 13.4%, a loss of 0.1%, and VIA earned 0.3%.
In the PC server/workstation processor segment, Intel finished with 93.9% market share, a loss of 0.3%, and AMD earned 6.1%, a gain of 0.3% while in the desktop PC processor segment, Intel earned 72.4%, a loss of 0.1%, and AMD earned 27.4%, a gain of 0.1%.
The research firm said that for year-over-year growth in PC (mobile, desktop, x86 server) microprocessor unit shipments in 2011 increased marginally from 10.1% to 10.3%.
By 2015, IDC expects that over 13% of PC processors will be based on the ARM architecture.
