Leaders in the processor industry benefit from strong demand and price-war lull.(NEWS: MICROPROCESSORS)

In the third quarter, Intel and AMD both managed to gain share in the global microprocessor market due to robust sales of PCs and servers, and the cessation of the companies' brutal price war, according to iSuppli Corp.

In Q3 2007, Intel accounted for 78.7 percent of global microprocessor revenue, up 0.3 of a percentage point from 78.4 percent in the second quarter. AMD fared even better, with its share rising by more than twice that of Intel to reach 13.9 percent, up 0.6 of a percentage point from 13.3 percent in the second quarter. The two microprocessor suppliers gained at the expense of their smaller rivals, whose collective share of global revenue declined to 7.4 percent in the third quarter, down from 8.2 percent in the second quarter.

iSuppli's final revenue ranking of global general-purpose microprocessor suppliers in the third quarter accounts for sales of all types of general-purpose microprocessors, including RISC chips as well as the PC-oriented x86 devices sold by Intel and AMD.

Yet again in the third quarter, the two microprocessor giants accounted for an increasing share of total market revenues. Combined, Intel and AMD claimed almost 93 percent of global microprocessor revenue in the third quarter of 2007--an increase of 2 percentage points compared to the third quarter of 2006.

In fact, Intel and AMD benefited from strong sales of computers in the quarter. Global PC shipments, including desktops, notebooks, and entry-level servers, ...