AMD dropped from the Top 10 leading chip manufacturers

A tough year in both the financial and market sectors has led AMD to drop the list of the world's top 10 chip makers rated by research firm iSuppli.

Dale Ford - Vice President of iSuppli research firm - can say that AMD was really very competitive before Intel. At one point, the company won a lot of market share of its competitors. But recently AMD has consistently suffered many failures.

The disappointing statistics for the first two quarters of this year led AMD to drop to 11th place on iSuppli's list of the world's leading chip makers.

' Similar to Intel in the first quarter, AMD also has a slight improvement. But that little prosperity is not enough to become a driving force. The first and second quarters are really difficult times for AMD. The situation is almost the opposite in the third quarter. But comparing those results to previous years is hard to say that 2007 is AMD's successful year .

Intel continues to assert its power in the global semiconductor industry. The most recently published figure shows that Intel's chip revenue this year may reach 7.7%, bringing the total revenue to 33.97 billion USD. In contrast, AMD's revenue this year is forecast to decrease by 22.7%.

ISuppli has not yet released a full list of the world's top 10 chip manufacturers in 2007.

Earlier this month IC Insights Inc. ranked AMD at the top of the world's top 10 chip vendors. At that time, Trevor Yancey, vice president of Insights IC, called AMD's progress a 'big earthquake'. But by the end of the month, iSuppli had dropped AMD from the list of the world's top 10 chip makers.

Mr. Ford said that IC Insights only focused on AMD's brightening in the third quarter but did not focus on comparing AMD this year with previous years. For example, in the third quarter, AMD's total market share of global processor chips reached the highest figure of 16.8%. Meanwhile, the number of the first quarter only stood at 10.9%. iSuppli forecasts AMD's market share this year to be only 14.2%. This figure is lower than last year's figure.

iSuppli also forecast that the fourth quarter of this year AMD will only reach 1.3 billion USD. Meanwhile, rival Intel with 78.8% of the market share will help push revenue up to 7.24 billion USD.

ISuppli's list of the 10 brightest stars in the world is Sony. Its chip revenue in 2007 is forecast to increase to 56.8%.

Hoang Dung