Intel vs. the Industry

Highlights include Intel Corp. (INTC - Analyst Report), Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD - Analyst Report), International Business Machines Corporation (IBM - Analyst Report), Motorola, Inc. (MOT - Analyst Report), Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ - Analyst Report), Sun Microsystems, Inc. (JAVA - Snapshot Report), NVIDIA Corp. (NVDA - Analyst Report) and Broadcom Corp. (BRCM - Analyst Report).

Looking at Intel and AMD by Industry Position

Intel Corp. (INTC - Analyst Report) is by far the largest supplier of microprocessors, motherboards and chipsets in the world. The company benefited from its initial capture of market share, and built on this position through constant innovation and versatility. The market research group iSupply Corporation provides the following market share data.



The company’s dominant position in microprocessors comes from its leadership in the PC market. The first company that seriously challenged its position in this space was Advanced Micro Devices (AMD - Analyst Report), with its more competitively priced offerings in the desktop and server areas.

Intel and AMD have continued to react to each other over the last few years, with Intel bringing out several lower-end products and AMD raising the price somewhat on its superior technology products. AMD’s first 64-bit processors, the Athlon and Opteron, posed a serious challenge to Intel, with the former capturing additional market share, mostly at the cost of Intel. But Intel soon introduced competing products, and the two archrivals continued to gain share versus the other smaller players.

The one thing to consider in this regard is the OEMs’ propensity to second source. Intel’s challenge is in the continuous introduction of sufficiently superior products that could offset this desire. However, Intel products enjoy a favored position at system integrators and hardware vendors.
 
Intel also faces significant competition from companies offering rival microprocessor designs, such as International Business Machines Corporation (IBM - Analyst Report) and Motorola (MOT - Analyst Report). Other competitors in the desktop area include IBM, Motorola and VIA. Intel’s mobile microprocessors compete with products from AMD, IBM, Motorola, Transmeta and VIA.

Intel's server processors compete with software-compatible products offered by AMD and with established products based on rival architectures, including those offered by Hewlett-Packard (HPQ - Analyst Report), IBM and Sun Microsystems (JAVA - Snapshot Report). Competing chipsets are produced by companies such as NVIDIA (NVDA - Analyst Report), AMD, Broadcom (BRCM - Analyst Report), Silicon Integrated Systems and VIA.

Sejuti Banerjea contributed to this post.