This Is Not AMD's Golden Age

The numbers are in, and the processor market looked very strong in the first half of 2010.

Market research firm IDC just released total sales and market share figures for the second quarter, and it's a bag of mixed blessings for everybody. The total market for PC chips grew by 6.2% sequentially, in terms of revenue collected. That's much better than the traditional 2.8% quarter-over-quarter drop at this time of year. It's another healthy sign when dollar sales are growing faster than unit sales, as was the case this time around -- average selling prices are inching up.

The good news continues for Intel (Nasdaq: INTC  ) when you look at the high-margin server chip market: The 500-pound gorilla stole a third of the market share Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD  ) sat on last quarter and now owns a crushing 93.5% of that segment. But AMD strikes back elsewhere:

Market Shares Per Segment

Intel also took a sliver of the desktop market away from AMD, but lost a slice of the notebook market instead. It looks like AMD's Puma platform for notebooks is making waves.

Of course, it would be better if the Opteron 6000 series of server chips could put up its dukes and give Intel's latest server products a decent fight. Until that happens, AMD will continue to skim close to the breakeven line even if the company gains ground in notebook sales and holds the line in desktops. The dream scenario would be if server partners like Dell (Nasdaq: DELL  ) , IBM (NYSE: IBM  ) , and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ  ) would put their backs into promoting AMD-based systems to their customers. That may not happen until the Fusion platform someday rolls out to servers and then proves its mettle with a radical architecture change.

Given these short-term restrictions to AMD's server-market ambitions, you'll have a few more quarters to decide whether the stock is worthy of a place in your portfolio. Just don't forget about AMD for too long, or you might miss the inevitable rise to market power and stupendous investor returns when it happens.