AMD sees significant growth in South Africa

Rudolph Muller

Rudolph Muller is the editor at MyBroadband and covers telecoms and broadband news. Rudolph comes from an academic background, but left the University of...

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The past year has seen a definitive surge in growth for components manufacturer AMD, bolstered by the release of its range of DirectX 11 supporting graphics units and a number of performance orientated processors.

According to a recent report filed by John Peddie Research, the industry’s research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, AMD has seen growth in market share from 19.3% in 2008 to roughly 20% in 2009. Although this number might not seem significant it is important to note that Nvidia – AMD’s biggest competitor within the graphics market, slumped from 30.6% to 24.3% of total market share in the same period. 

Gaith Kadir, AMD General Manager for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa, believes that the recent growth can be attributed to a number of factors and added that the company’s South African market share has grown in accordance with global trends.

“AMD has grown its market share in South Africa in 2009. With our new line of the Radeon 5000 series GPU’s introduced in the fourth quarter of 2009 we are looking to complete this range top to bottom in the first quarter of 2010. New server products are also launching in the first half of 2010 alongside an update and new desktop CPU’s, which will give AMD more positive growth for 2010,” said Kadir.

As a result of this market growth Kadir also confirmed that South Africa had been elevated at AMD with regards to sales allocation status. Previously some units were difficult to find to lack due to stock availability, specifically within the high end GPU market.

“We have most certainly seen an increase in terms of allocation to the South African region. Thanks to the efforts of our local partners, we have been able to put forward more accurate forecasting, which resulted in more allocation of product to our region,” added Kadir.

Within the processor range AMD still falls behind Intel, which currently holds 55.2% of the global market share. Nonetheless the company is confident that its recently released range of budget CPUs such as the Phenom II X2 555, will serve to bolster its processor sales.

In the graphics processor market however AMD is quickly catching up to its closest competitor, Nvidia. Nvidia is has been criticised for delivering its DirectX 11 compatible range (referred to as Fermi) much later than AMD, who introduced the HD 5870 in September. This time difference has given AMD the opportunity to release more affordable units for the mid to lower end of the market, allowing the manufacturer to capture a significant portion of Nvidia’s market share.

When asked if AMD will overtake Nvidia in market share Kadir said, “With AMD being the only vendor that will have a full DX11 product stack available by mid quarter one, we are confident that we will do very well compared to our
competitors in the GPU market.”

Overall it appears that AMD, once arguably regarded as the underdog in the components environment, could soon take up position as a formidable rival not only to Nvidia but to Intel as well.

AMD in SA << discussion