Bad news for AMD as Intel gains server share

AMD just can't seem to catch a break. After two profitable quarters (amid a multiyear string of losers), a product transition causes it to miss out on the big first-quarter server market rebound that propelled Intel to record profits.

According to a new market share report from IDC, Intel managed to take critical server market share from AMD, with the former company seeing a year-over-year jump from 89.9 percent last year to 93.5 percent this quarter. Meanwhile, AMD's market share dropped from 10.1 percent to 6.5 percent.

AMD's slow transition to the Opteron 6000 series, and the subsequent market share losses, are practically the mirror image of Intel's success in getting its 32nm Westmere and 45nm Nehalem EX server parts into the waiting hands of server makers who finally were ready to open their wallets and start purchasing again.

What makes this situation especially ugly for AMD is the fact that the server market is the company's bread-and-butter. During the worst of the downturn, AMD notoriously jettisoned every part of the company that didn't involve designing x86 processors and GPUs, and it focused in particular on its server business because that was one place where it was still fairly healthy. Server is AMD's absolute core vertical, which means that the company can't really afford too many missteps of this type.

AMD's fortunes could still turn this year, though. The traditional IT upgrade cycle usually happens in the fall, so September will be a big month for the company—at least, it will be if the normal seasonal buying patterns have really returned to the market.

Most PC buying on both the consumer side and corporate side happens in the second half of the year, particularly in the last quarter, as students go back to school and businesses upgrade their machines. This seasonal cyclicality actually halted altogether in 2008, but most of the component suppliers claim to have seen signs that it's returning. Still, we won't know until the fall how much of that normal seasonal surge in buying we'll see this year—the only thing that's certain is that AMD needs that surge to happen, and the company needs to participate in it.