US chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) is eating into leader Intel's market share in China rapidly, according to the latest market survey made by Gartner.

In the second quarter of this year, AMD's brand computer market share in China reached 28 percent, a 6-percent year-on-year increase, while its microprocessor division has over 50-percent share of the retail market, according to a report in the Beijing Morning Post.

The survey shows that AMD's market share in servers, desktop PCs and laptops have all increased in each quarter during the past year.

Among them, its market share in the laptop segment rose by nearly 100 percent in the second quarter. AMD also holds 43 percent of the market in consumer desktops, the highest proportion of the three groups.

Analysts attribute a major part of the success to AMD CEO Hector Ruiz's strategy of putting the Greater China market as an important one for the company.

Karen Guo, AMD senior vice president and president of AMD Greater China got the privilege of reporting directly to Hector Ruiz since the establishment of the Greater China region in 2005, making AMD's operation in the Chinese market more flexible.

Intel launched several campaigns to win back the Chinese market from AMD in the past year; Intel released its latest dual-core chips and elevated China to an independent sales and marketing region.

However, the success of AMD China last year shows it's strong enough to resist the reactions from its rival, Intel Corp., according to the newspaper.

Before 2007, AMD China's strategy is to seize Intel's original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners one by one. After successfully occupying the OEM market by establishing cooperative relations with HP, Dell and Lenovo, AMD also changed its strategy this year, by developing further cooperation with OEM partners.

That's because OEM manufacturers now enjoy a favorable position of being able to choose between AMD and Intel.

The newspaper cited an anonymous executive of an OEM manufacturer as saying that cooperating with AMD makes them feel more comfortable and thus they are increasing the cooperation.

(Chinadaily.com.cn September 6, 2007)