After weathering a brutal downturn for most of 2009, chipmakers like Intel and AMD shrugged off the worldwide economic malaise to record positive growth—albeit slight—for the year. HardwareCentral.com explains how the release of Windows 7 combined with an overall increase IT capital spending will help improve chip sales by about 15 percent in 2010.
Worldwide PC microprocessor shipments rebounded enough in the second half of 2009 to erase the first half’s losses and push the annual figure into positive growth, reflecting a remarkable turnaround given the plunge of late 2008.
That’s the conclusion of industry researcher IDC, which found that worldwide microprocessor sales rose 31.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 over the same period a year earlier — a steep jump due in part to the fact that Q4 2008 was the start of the collapse.
But growth is growth and the industry’s year-end performance helped it exit 2009 with a 2.5 percent improvement over 2008.
Due to downward price pressure, however, vendors racked up a total of $28.6 billion in sales for 2009, with average selling prices (ASPs) having fallen 7.1 percent.