AMD are for all intents fab-less. I imagine there is some purchasing shenanigans going on to sidestep the whole licensing agreement but AMD are most certainly not manufacturing a single piece of silicon for Sony/Microsoft
BOth it has been confirmed that AMD ARE making the chips and selling the soc's, and its very profitable, they've already made invester statements(which its highly illegal to lie on) to the tune of saying they'll be expecting 50% of their revenue to come from custom made APU's within a year or so. PS4 chips alone(afaik) are said to be, I can't remember precisely but they are expecting custom APU sales to give them $80mil extra sales in Q3, and $250mil extra sales in Q4.
Its a bit unclear which console is releasing precisely when, its expected that PS4 is being made at GloFo IIRC and MS chip at IBM, but its likely AMD has essentially hired IBM as a fab(and partially because afaik its IBM responsible for the edram), but its likely the deal means they are selling the chips post production to MS.
Because quite simply AMD has a x86 licence, and neither Sony nor MS have a x86 licence, you can't sell a x86 IP for someone to manufacture to someone without a x86 licence and seeing as a Soc means AMD gets paid for the audio, the usb, the cores, the gpu, where selling the IP MS/Sony can do everything but the core/gpu VERY easily, its FAR more profitable to build a soc and sell the entire thing than sell the IP and get some royalties for every sell, massively more profitable.
As said it seems likely that xbox one is coming later than the PS4 and people are thinking the 80/250mil towards the end of the year is essentially mostly or only PS4 sales, with Xbox production and sales likely to further bump that up significantly.
MS/xbox production is still murky, I haven't seen anyone confirm anything, but EVERYONE who has weighed in on the subject says quite categorically that PS4 chips are being produced by AMD.
Its possible that MS being so involved with AMD/Intel got Intel to agree to let them buy the IP, but as above royalties would be worth a lot less than selling the whole SOC to them so I have no idea why AMD would go that route.
Overall falling from 2nd to 4th is a non story, PC sales are falling for the industry, mobile is soaring and will likely soon explode as cheaper smart phone models are starting to flood into China and asia in general meaning up till the last year or two the most populated parts of the globe weren't really buying smartphones, and that is changing very very quickly.
If you look at the PC/laptop market, AMD is second, and always has been, if you look at the mobile market, phones and tablets, AMD is only partially involved in part of it.
Its like putting in Mclaren super car sales and suggesting they suck because Mclaren car sales vs GM car sales are pathetic, mixing entirely different markets is simply pointless.
IN a decade Samsung/qualcom will likely have as much/more of the processor market than Intel, but Intel will still be the biggest pc sales and AMD will still be second.
