AMD scores against Intel with Toshiba laptop deal

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. wins this round in its fierce battle with Intel Corp. as AMD shatters the exclusive chip partnership of Toshiba Corp. with its archrival. AMD, according to a Reuters report, will start shipping microprocessors to Toshiba for use in the company's laptops.

Toshiba expects to put the AMD chips in about 20 percent of the notebooks it sells in the United States and Europe, which account for about 60 percent of its overall PC operations.

According to Toshiba spokeswoman Yuko Sugahara, the company plans to put AMD processors in moderate-priced standard models for individual and corporate clients.

"With PCs becoming commodity products, there seems to be a new way of thinking that competition should be introduced even in procurement of such core parts like processors as long as there are no major differences in product specifications," Macquarie Securities analyst Yoshihiro Shimada told Reuters.

"This could be a message that an era in which Intel took the lion's share of microprocessor profits as the king of PC chips is over."