Continued price competition resulted in second quarter microprocessor revenue falling 4.4% from the first quarter although a record number of microprocessors shipped.

While the second quarter is typically the slowest quarter for processor demand, worldwide processor unit shipments grew 3.1% over the first quarter and 16.1% over the second quarter of 2007.

Strong supplier price competition in the middle and low end of the desktop PC processor and mobile PC processor market segments caused overall market revenue to decline 4.5% compared to the first quarter to $7.7 billion.

"While sequential market growth is unusual in the second quarter of the calendar year, it's clear that, in the second quarter, Intel's processor shipments drove the growth," says Shane Rau, director of semiconductors, personal computing research at IDC in Framingham, Mass. "Intel's processor shipments alone grew nearly 4.3% over the first quarter and 20.8% over the second quarter last year, while AMD's processor shipments were about flat."

In terms of processor supplier shares, on an overall unit basis, Intel earned 79.7% market share, a gain of 0.9%. AMD earned 19.7%, a loss of 1.2%. IDC forecasts that PC processor market revenue will grow 7.5% in 2008 to over $32.8 billion.