According to IDC researchers, AMD has done a rather good job in 2009 and managed to steal back part of its lost market share from Intel. AMD's share has been shrinking for several quarters, due to a lack of competitive products, but it seems new processors offered at tempting prices managed to rekindle interest.

IDC reports x86 processor demand grew by record levels in Q4 2009, as shipments jumped by 31.1 percent sequentially. During the same quarter, AMD managed to recover some of its lost share. Intel's market share was 80.5 percent, while AMD managed to grab 19.4 percent. In Q4 2008, AMD shipped 17.7 percent of processors worldwide, so 19.4 percent marks a rather healthy recovery.

The IDC attributes AMD's comeback to aggressive pricing and a drop in demand for Intel's Atom processors in Q1 2009. It's also worth noting AMD managed to introduce several competitive products in 2009. While the new CPUs could not match Intel's high end Core i7 products, they offered good value for money in the mainstream and entry level markets.

AMD's mobile processor market share also jumped from 10.2 to 12.7 percent during 2009. Although AMD introduced several new mobile processors, the effort was nowhere near to come close to Intel, which successfully introduced its CULV series, and more recently new Allendale-based chips.