In spite of the global financial crisis, the worldwide CPU market has grown to record breaking levels in Q3. According to IDC, the trend is slowing down and there's a bleak outlook for Q4 2008, as well as the whole of 2009.

CPU shipments grew 14% on last quarter and 15.8% year on year, but due to lower average selling prices revenues grew at 7.6 and 4.1 percent quarter on quarter and year on year, respectively. IDC attributes strong growth to high demand for netbooks, based primarily on Intel's Atom CPUs.

Intel currently holds an 80.8 percent overall market share, gaining 1.1 percent, while AMD finished the quarter with 18.5 percent, losing 1.2 percent. In the mobile market, Intel is doing even better, with an 87.4% share and 0.8% gain, trailed by AMD with an 11.5% market share and a drop of 1.1%. VIA is also growing by 0.3%, but still holds just 1.2% of the market.

However, in the server/workstation arena Intel lost 0.6% for and finished with 85.6% market share, while AMD got 14.4%, gaining 0.6%. In the desktop segment Intel currently has a 73.5% share, while AMD grabbed 26.4%, no changes there.

Due to the economic crisis, IDC will be lowering its sales forecasts for 2009.

More here.