According to iSuppli beancounters, Intel's global processor market share has increased in every quarter of 2008, while AMD's stayed flat.

Market researchers attribute some of Intel's success to strong sales of its Atom series of CPUs. Other Intel platforms also got some credit, mainly high end desktop and server parts. Intel ended the year with a 81.8 percent market share (Q4).

Things weren't so rosy for rival AMD, as it ended Q4 with a 10.6 percent market share. However, iSuppli deems AMD's decision to spin off its manufacturing operations into a seperate company, Globalfoundries, was a right one. Coupled with AMD's recent transition to 45nm and the introduction of several competitive desktop and server CPUs, iSuppli believes AMD could bouce back and improve its share in 2009.

AMD is conspicuously absent in the netbook market, and its notebook CPU portfolio is also quite weak compared to Intel's. The netbook market grew in excess of 2,000 percent compared to 2007. It must be noted that few netbooks were introduced in 2007, but even this year netbook sales are expected to increase 68.5 percent, amidst a general slump in sales.

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