AMD Posts First Quarterly Profit In Over Three Years The 'Other' Chip Manufacturers Post First Positive Quarters - A Market Recovery

AMD was once the mindshare leader in the chipset space, but had fallen
on hard times in the past few years. The company recently announced
their quarterly earnings for Q4 2009 and announced they have made money
for the first time in 13 quarters – roughly 3 year and 3 months.
This could be a sign that the entire personal computer market is turnin
g around, as competitor Intel also posted a large gain in Q4.
AMD processors were the popular choice with computer enthusiasts in the
early-to-mid 2000's as Intel attempted to compete with the sagging
Pentium 4 architecture, but the market suffered a paradigm shift in 2006
when Intel introduced their (still) successfully popular Core
architecture and line new processors, which left AMD behind.
AMD purchased one of the big two graphics manufacturers, ATI, in 2006,
which has been doing well for them, competing directly with NVIDIA in
the consumer graphics space, all the while AMD's processors have been
doing mediocre in sales and reviews. In the past year, AMD's new Athlon
II series of chips has been well reviewed, and while not competing with
Intel's Core i7 at the bleeding edge high-end, the chips have been doing
well in the price/performance ratio in the low- and medium-ends of the
market.
The worldwide economic recession, combined with AMD's poor processor
offerings contributed to them suffering over three years of losses, but
with new Athlon II processors and subsidiary ATI's gains in beating
NVIDIA to market with DirectX 11 cards, as well as the Eyefinity
technology have led to AMD's first positive quarter.
Their rival, Intel, also posted a huge $10 billion gain in Q4 2009, and
with both chipmakers posting gains, it could be a sign that the personal
computer market, which has been sagging in the recession, is starting to
turn around.