PC CPU Deliveries Down Slightly in Q2

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A leading analyst firm reported this week that PC processor shipments for the second quarter of 2011 shrank slightly from the previous sequential quarter, yet compared to shipments during the same quarter last year, they gained a fraction.

Additionally, of the PC, notebook, and PC server CPUs sold in the second quarter by all the major processor makers, some 60 percent of them contained integrated graphics processors (IGP), according to the report by IDC issued Tuesday.

During the second calendar quarter of 2011, PC microprocessor shipments declined by 2.9 percent from the first quarter but, in contrast, grew by 0.6 percent over the same quarter of 2010, the report said.

In terms of revenue, the PC CPU market brought in $9.49 billion during the quarter — a decline of 4 percent from the first quarter, but a gain of 5.4 percent over the year-ago quarter.

Part of the slip in sales during the second quarter of 2011, however, was due to the fact that the first quarter of 2011 contained an extra week.

“The first quarter of 2011 was better than most first quarters due to the extra calendar week,” Shane Rau, director of semiconductors, personal computing research at IDC, said in a statement.

“If we took off that extra week, the performance between the two quarters probably would’ve seen a seen a slight sequential uptick from 1Q to 2Q,” Rau added.

Meanwhile, sales of both Intel’s Sandy Bridge and AMD’s Fusion processors, which both contain their own integrated graphics, continued to ramp up during the second quarter, comprising more than 60 percent of both vendors’ sales.

Overall, Intel’s share of the PC CPU market declined to 79.3 percent worldwide, a loss of 1.5 percent compared to the previous quarter’s share, while AMD picked up 1.5 percent share to finish the quarter with 20.4 percent.

Stuart J. Johnston is a contributing editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals. Follow him on Twitter @stuartj1000.