AMD, who cornered Nvidia out of supplying GPU chips for the next generation consoles for all three console makers, reports a 2nd quarter loss of $ 74 million. While some analysts are downbeat on the news, they actually beat market expectations, and expect to return to profitability from cutting those deals.
For AMD, this is essentially a comeback story, as they had lost ground in the graphics chip market in years prior. The company was hit with a perfect storm of problems, from a declining PC market to simply failing to execute as well as competitors.
They clearly show a trend of stemming these losses with each quarter as well. The company's 2nd quarter report at 2012 came out as a loss of $ 473 million, followed by losses of $ 98 million and then $ 29 million.
Surprisingly, the company revealed in an investor's call that they expect profits from upcoming consoles Playstation 4 and Xbox One to actually dwindle. The money they get from the IP license for their Jaguar GPU will wheedle down and they will eventually simply be supplying chips for the consoles.
However, AMD has a secret weapon, as they have secured exclusive rights to make Firecore GPUs for Apple's new Mac Pro, away from Nvidia's CUDA. Since Firecore uses the OpenCL standard vs. CUDA's, they have secured themselves exclusivity for multimedia production, as multimedia programs, working on Apple, will develop around the OpenCL standard as well.
AMD also intends to focus on the bespoke APU (integrated CPU and GPU) that they developed on Wii U and PS4, for their future businesses. It seems strange to say this, but in the face of this $ 74 million loss, things are looking up for AMD.
