Intel has reversed recent pressure on its market share by gaining 4.5 per cent in the microprocessor market in the first quarter of 2007, according to a revised estimate from iSuppli.

Based on an analysis of Intel’s first-quarter results, the company has 80.2 per cent of microprocessor revenue during the period.

Rival supplier, AMD saw its share of microprocessor revenue fell to 11.1 per cent in the first quarter.

“We knew Intel had gained share compared to AMD in the first quarter, but the sales gap between the companies widened to a much greater degree than we had expected,” said Dale Ford, v-p market intelligence services for iSuppli.

“The microprocessor market-share disparity between the companies expanded to 69.1 points in the first quarter, up from 60 points in the fourth quarter of 2006,” said Ford.

The main driver seemed to be Intel’s Core 2 Duo, dual-core PC microprocessors. “This represents a major reversal of fortune compared to 2006, when AMD had the advantage with its popular dual-core microprocessors and gained share from Intel,” said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst for compute platforms at iSuppli.
 
iSuppli’s estimate is for all types of microprocessors for all applications, and not exclusively for the types of PC-oriented X86 microprocessors sold by Intel and AMD. If this were a ranking of X86 market share, both companies’ percentages would be much higher.