Can Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NYSE:AMD) Turn Things Around?

We last covered Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NYSE:AMD) when the company was in a bad place. The second quarter of 2013 so far, however, has seen AMD‘s stock price inch its way back up to around $4 per share after the stock rallied in early May.

AMD reported first quarter revenues that were mostly aligned with analyst expectations and managed to contain loss per share and beat the estimated loss of $0.20 per share. Still, the company’s quarterly revenue has gone 32% down on a year-over-year basis.

AMD is still struggling to maintain its status as a respectable chipmaker despite the onslaught of much bigger Intel Corp. After AMD announced late last year they expect to start rolling out 64-bit processors based on ARM Holdings’ architecture in 2014, they recently released news on another big step in diversification. The company already achieved significant penetration in the console sector after the next-generation consoles of both Sony and Microsoft adopted an AMD APU as their system-on-chip solution. Now AMD announced that it will be diversifying away from Windows as an OS and will be producing chips that run Google’s Android and Chrome OS.

This announcement comes at a time when PC sales are slumping not only for AMD but virtually for every player in the sector. On the other hand statistics indicate that the number of users who have adopted Google’s Android OS is slowly approaching the one billion mark. The news from January this year that AMD was hiring engineers who previously worked with Qualcomm and Apple may suggest there is a considerable push on part of the company to achieve the much-needed penetration in the mobile market, which has eluded AMD‘s grasp for too long.

Meanwhile, analysts with Zacks reiterated a neutral rating for AMD last week. The analysts underlined the company’s Q1 earnings that beat estimates but also the company’s cash burn rate that may be a significant time-pressure factor.

AMD stock is currently sitting at $3.92 per share, or less than 1% up in early trading.