In what may signal brighter days ahead for PC manufacturers, worldwide PC microprocessor shipments in the fourth quarter of 2009 rose modestly compared to the third quarter, according to IDC’s latest PC processor study. But despite the down economy, worldwide PC microprocessor shipments set all-time records for a single quarter in the October through December period.
Compared to a year ago, shipments in the fourth quarter were up 31.3 percent. And for the full year of 2009, total PC processor shipments grew 2.5 percent. The only low spot was declining revenue. In total, revenue dipped 7.1 percent to $28.6 billion.
“Compared to 3Q09, the modest rise in shipments in 4Q09 indicates that the market is returning to normal seasonal patterns,” said Shane Rau, director of semiconductor research at IDC. “Compared to 4Q08, the huge rise in shipments indicates that the market has put the recession behind it. Both comparisons indicate that the PC industry anticipates improvement in PC end demand in 2010.”
New Products Drive Growth
In addition to overall shipments, IDC also examined the market performance by PC form factor. It found that both mobile PC and server processors posted healthy growth. Mobile PC processors, which include Intel’s Atom processors for netbooks, gained 11.7 percent from the third to the fourth quarter. By contrast, x86 server processors grew 14.1 percent quarter over quarter while desktop processors grew 4.8 percent.
On the client side — mobile and desktop — IDC noted that mainstream and performance processors rose modestly as a percentage of the total mix, compared to value processors. This, the firm said, caused the overall market average selling price of processors to rise 6.7 percent quarter over quarter.
“The sequential rise in mainstream and high-end client processors points to the new products, like Core i5 and Athlon II, that Intel and AMD were shipping into…