AMD fails to eat into Intel's share of the chip market

Intel's market share remains steady at a smidge over 80 per cent

Intel is focusing more attention on smartphone chips

Neither Intel nor AMD have been able to make significant cuts into the other's market share, according to a recent analyst report.

Research firm iSuppli said that between the 2009 and 2010 second financial quarters, the two chip makers retained their positions in the market with only minimal change in market share.

Intel remained by far the dominant vendor in the market, with a market share of 80.4 per cent. That figure is down only slightly from the 80.7 per cent share Intel had during the same quarter one year ago,

The slight loss for Intel, however, was not AMD's gain. The company saw its piece of the microprocessor market remain steady at 11.52 per cent.

Instead, the gain went into the "other" category, which accounted for 8.1 per cent of all sales.

iSuppli compute platforms research principal analyst Matthew Wilkins said that while neither company cut into the other's share, a growing market will continue to fuel competition.

"While market and technology conditions have changed dramatically during the past 12 months, the high level of competition between Intel and AMD has not," the analyst said.

"As circumstances continue to evolve in the second half of 2010, expect these two companies to maintain their epic competitive struggle."

The report comes as Intel has set it sights on the growing smartphone, tablet and embedded systems markets, where smaller specialist vendors such as ARM are looking to make inroads.