PC microprocessor sales buoyant despite Q4 2010 slump

The PC microprocessor market saw a marked slowdown in the last three months of 2010, logging a "notable" fall in sales, according to new figures from IDC.

The analyst firm said that sales were fairly buoyant in the third quarter of 2010, but slumped by a fifth in the last three months compared against the previous year.

However, despite the disappointing end to the year, IDC's Worldwide PC Microprocessor report said that the market grew overall in 2010.

Shipments for the full year rose by 17 per cent, and revenue jumped by just over a quarter to $36.3bn (£22.4bn).

"The fourth quarter was weak and out of sync with normal seasonal patterns in terms of unit shipments," said Shane Rau, director of semiconductors personal computing research at IDC.

"The first half of the year turned out to be the better half. However, looking back at the whole year, it's clear that the ongoing shift to mobile processors, combined with a shift back towards high-performance mobile processors, as opposed to Atom processors for netbooks, drove a significant rise in overall processor average selling prices."

Shipments varied by form factor, according to the report. Mobile PC units grew by 26 per cent and x86 server processors by 28 per cent, while mobile processors dominated the market with 54.1 per cent of processors shipped.

Intel was the best performing vendor with an 80 per cent share in the fourth quarter. AMD's share fell by 0.4 per cent to 18.9 per cent, and VIA logged some 0.3 per cent.

IDC is expecting PC microprocessor shipments to grow by a "conservative" 10 per cent next year.