AMD clearly wants a stronger mobile presence and a key to that is a strong relationship with PC makers, said Dean McCarron, principal analyst with Mercury Research. Despite gaining share, AMD's presence in the mobile market is weak. AMD's x86 microprocessor market share was 19.4 percent during the second quarter this year, compared to a 79.9 percent share for Intel, according to Mercury Research.

Reed will use his past experience at Lenovo to boost AMD's sales of chips for PCs, wrote analysts for FBR Capital Markets in a research note sent on Thursday.

"We do think Read can and will leverage his relationships at Lenovo to help drive AMD's sales, and at IBM to help drive AMD's research and development and foundry strategies," wrote the FBR Capital Markets analysts.

Beyond Intel, AMD faces an emerging threat from ARM, whose chips are making their way from mobile devices to servers and PCs. AMD chips could possibly get squeezed between Intel and ARM, whose processors go into most smartphones and tablets.

The question is whether AMD will remain the firm number two chip maker and gain market share from Intel, or whether it will fall victim to ARM-based chip makers such as Nvidia, which is making ARM-based chips code-named Project Denver for servers, PCs and mobile devices. Just like x86 processors, ARM processors will also support Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8 OS on tablets and PCs.