A price war cease-fire saw Intel"s stranglehold on the global microprocessor market grow incrementally tighter in the third quarter, technology research firm iSuppli reported Monday, while the chip leader"s chief x86 rival, Advanced Micro Devices, continued to bounce back from its market-share low point in Q1 2007. "The companies in their third-quarter financial calls said they had seen a reduction in the aggressive pricing that has ruled throughout most of 2007. This signifies the beginning of the end for the x86 microprocessor price war," iSuppli claimed in a statement attached to its Q3 2007 Worldwide Microprocessor Market Share report.
In the third quarter, Intel and AMD combined for 92.6 percent of global microprocessor revenue, increasing from 91.7 percent sequentially and up 1.7 percentage points from the duo"s 90.9 percent market share in Q3 2006. Taken as a group, other microprocessor players like IBM, Freescale, Marvell and VIA saw their market share slip from 8.2 percent in the second quarter to 7.4 percent in the third, iSuppli reported.