Aggressive AMD on commercial landgrab mission

Vendor claims it is eating rivals' market share thanks to deeper channel ties and new vendor partnerships

AMD claims it is stepping even further out of the shadow of biggest rival Intel, with evidence that PC and laptop shipments powered by its technology are growing year on year.

The vendor is determined to woo more mainstream vendors, and is currently enjoying a strong relationship with HP, while building close ties with Lenovo and Acer, as it looks to win commercial customers’ mindsets over its biggest competitor.

For example, in the UK, based on recent IDC PC shipment figures, quotas of HP notebooks powered by AMD processors in commercial segments are on the up, with the firm enjoying 31 per cent market share in H1 2014, up from 24 per cent in H1 2012. This equates to a 41 per cent increase in units shipped in the first half of the year.

James Blackman, commercial channel sales manager EMEA at AMD, said the key to success was deepening ties with partners.

“When I joined AMD it became clear to me that we had a great relationship with manufacturers, but were not embracing the channel. We had to change our approach," he said.

“Manufacturers are still very important to us, but we had to embrace our distributors, and that was our starting point. Because of our size we can pick the right battles. We started building relationships with our distributors’ sales forces to get them on side and ensure they understood what our proposition is. It is all about simplifying our message."

Blackman added that a lot of its wins were confidential, leaving it unable to shout about its successes.

"It is often said that we are one of the industry's best-kept secrets," he said. “But we are now in a really good position, and there has been a steady increase [in market share]. We have been very strong and seen a lot of success with HP and its Elite product range, and we are growing with Lenovo, and excitingly, Acer is on board with us as well with the launch of its new entry-level commercial desktops.

“However, one thing we have to do is scale up the engagement with partners. We need to make sure we talk up our success with HP, and replicate that through our growing relationship with Lenovo and Acer."

He added that being the smaller player in the market also has its advantages.

“There is a lot of inventory sloshing around the market and a lot of people are being squeezed. That helps us because we are giving partners and customers a different story and we don’t suffer from inventory problems.”

Alex Tatham, managing director of Westcoast said there was definitely appetite in the market for a more ambitious AMD.

"They have definitely stolen market share, although I would say their core business is still through retail and the consumer play, but there is no question that AMD is doing better than it did in the past. We work with both AMD and Intel, and both are very important to our business.

"However Intel is doing very well in datacenters and the server space and we would all like to see AMD push itself higher up the stack into this space. The channel is definitely ready for it and waiting."