AMD has reported its Q3 results and there’s room for optimism, as it incurred a narrower net loss than the market expected.

Although the chipmaker was in trouble even before the recession kicked in, it is now showing some signs of recovery. Its Q3 net loss was $135 million, a slight increase from $127 in Q3 2008, but still somewhat lower than expected. During the same period last year, AMD reported a revenue of $1.8 billion and this year it managed $1.4 billion.

In a conference call AMD CEO Dirk Meyer stressed that he was pleased with the results. He praised AMD’s graphics division, saying demand for ATI chips was strong both in the desktop and mobile market. Meyer expects the industry to rebound in 2010.

The numbers don’t tell the whole story. Last year AMD had next to no processors to compete with Intel in the highest grossing market segments and it was competing with Nvidia on equal terms. The introduction of new 45nm CPUs and successful graphics chips has done a lot to change the market perception of AMD and turn things around.

Although it still can’t match Intel in the high end and mobile market, it can hold its ground against Intel’s mid range and value products. The situation is even better for its graphics business, as ATI has managed pull away from Nvidia and grab quite a bit of market share.

Microsoft’s Bing is getting a healthy bump in the search engine market share area.

According to CNet the new engine managed to push Microsoft’s share from 9.1 to 11.1 in just a week’s time. Of course this could just be due to the newness of the new engine.

Many people will try something out when it first hits to see what it is all about and might ever go back to that product once they tire of it.

Over the years this has happened to Microsoft on a number of products, only time will tell if Bing will be the same.

Microsoft has said it would like to pick up at least a couple points of market share over the next year. One might think that the company should expect more, given it has not only poured huge resources into the technology, but is also spending tens of millions of dollars in both a big advertising push and deals to nab the default search engine position on new PCs.

So far, Bing is off to a good start, said ComScore Senior Vice President Mike Hurt.

A new Mercury Research report on the processor market indicates AMD has regained some marketshare, the company had 20.9 percent of PC processor sales in Q1 2009, up from 17 percent in Q4 2008. Meanwhile, Intel’s share of the market dropped from 82.1 percent to 78.2 percent.

This is much related to the welcomed Phenom II series processors which received very positive reviews and feedback from the community.

However, Mercury Research analysts add that the quarter was defined by inventory adjustments, so the marketshare figures do not necessarily reflect the actual state of the market or market share. The research firm says processor makers have sold off most of their excess inventory, and expects the market is ready for positive growth.

PC processor sales declined 8.3 percent in the first three months of the year compared to the last quarter of 2008, said Dean McCarron, principal of Mercury. “The quarter-on-quarter decline is only slightly worse than the average seasonal drop of 7.4 percent,” McCarron said.

Notebook processors declined “far more” than desktop or server chips in the period. “Without the mobile downturn, the first quarter would have been much stronger than seasonal,” he said.