(Column) - In the battle for market supremacy, Intel has always been the leader, and AMD has always been playing catch up, at least as far as market share is considered. This is perhaps the strangest thing as AMD clearly makes better processors, and I don’t recall seeing a respectable testbed made of anything other than an Athlon FX or the X2 (now). Sure Pentium D has kept Intel in the running, but it has been nothing more than a saving grace rather than an aggressive product, which kicked AMD out of the arena and stamped Intel’s authority all over it.

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This sentiment seems to be finally reflecting in sales figures, and for the first time, AMD has outdone Intel in desktop processor sales. In June of this year, AMD had a remarkable comeback (between June and July timeframe) when its market share shot up from just above 20 percent to somewhere around 50 percent. As AMD gained market share, Intel dropped from approximately 80 percent to nearly 50 percent.

Intel then fought back, but AMD seems to have won the battle this time around. However, before AMD rejoices, we need to analyze these figures and see why Intel had such a dramatic fall.

The number one reason that AMD has come up at the top is because of HP’s Media Center sales, which have skyrocketed due to the intelligent pricing strategies by AMD and HP.

The second reason, which is not all that obvious, is that a great number of buyers probably held back to see what Intel launches in a few months. Since Intel just had an IDF in August where it discussed a fairly extensive roadmap comprising of Yonah and 64-bit with all the right sounding terms thrown around, users probably held back their upgrades to ensure their systems don’t become obsolete in a matter of few months.

And finally, since AMD has filed an antitrust complaint against Intel and a number of it’s partners; it’s possible that users are broadening their minds, eyes and senses to the phenomenally better deals being offered by AMD (more so with performance than overall value, specifically with high-end components).

All this has translated into AMD beating Intel for the September sales, and all I can say to that is it’s about time it did so.