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AMD rides the crashing wave
Surprisingly, AMD managed to carve out significant wins during the tumultuous quarter and has now, once again, set a new record high x86 market share of 27.7%, an incredible increase of seven percentage points over last year.
Both Intel and AMD suffered from the disturbingly fast decline in the desktop PC market, but AMD didn’t lose sales quite as quickly as Intel, resulting in a share gain for the quarter. Notably, much of the decline in desktop PC came as vendors burned through excess CPU inventory, which McCarron says impacted Intel more severely than AMD. As such, Intel still gained some unit share in the desktop PC market compared to a year ago. AMD CEO Lisa Su recently predicted that the company would see a decline in the ‘high single-digit’ percentage for the desktop PC TAM for the year, indicating that shrinking desktop PC sales could continue.
AMD continued to take big strides in the mobile/laptop market as it set another record for unit share in that segment with 22.5%. AMD also gained in the server market for the 12th consecutive quarter, reaching 11.6% of the market.
We do have to temper the slide of the desktop PC market against the fact that it has been at a decade high over the last several quarters and the overall CPU market had a slew of impressive firsts during the quarter, too, with McCarron saying, «In spite of the downturn, the market saw several records set, including record highs for server processor revenue, IoT/semi-custom units and revenue, and a new record high for combined client (desktop and notebook) CPU average selling prices.
«Lower shipments of low-priced entry-level CPUs and strong ramps of new mobile processors (Alder Lake CPUs for Intel and Barcelo and Rembrandt CPUs cores for AMD) resulted in much higher mobile CPU prices, which helped set the record client (combined desktop and notebook) average selling prices of $138, which were up more than 10 percent on quarter and more than 30 percent on year.»
McCarron also brought us up to speed on Arm’s incursion into the desktop PC space, which is largely led by Apple, «Our estimate for ARM PC client share (including Chromebooks and Apple’s M1 based Macs with X86 desktop and mobile CPUs in the total client size estimate) is 11.3 percent, up from 10.3 percent last quarter and just shy of double the 5.9 percent from a year ago. While Apple’s Mac business declined in the first quarter, the downturn was slight compared to the X86 PC market,» McCarron said.
You’ll find the segment-by-segment breakdowns below with a bit of additional commentary.
The decline in the PC market comes as the pandemic recedes and global economic turmoil and inflation mount. Sluggish CPU sales are exacerbated by seasonal downturns, and all of these factors have conspired to reduce demand for both Intel and AMD.
McCarron reports that excess desktop PC inventory also played a role here, which impacted Intel more than its competitor. AMD has had supply issues with its pricey server CPUs — it sells them as fast as it can make them — so it has prioritized these higher-margin products by curtailing production of its desktop PC chips. As such, it doesn’t have as much inventory on hand to burn through, so it didn’t lose as much share.
Intel, on the other hand, actually gained one percentage point of share year-over-year, which comes during the first full quarter that it has had its Alder Lake processors, which have taken over our list of Best CPUs for gaming, fully available.
The mobile market also receded during the quarter, so both Intel and AMD saw a declining number of units sold. But, again, AMD’s declines were smaller, thus resulting in another quarter of share growth. However, this gain also represents an impressive 4.4 percentage point gain year-on-year.
McCarron says that AMD gained significantly in the commercial notebook market, likely helping to shore up its shipments. This quarter represents another record high for AMD’s notebook share. However, the battle for notebooks will remain pitched — AMD recently revealed its Zen 4-powered Dragon Range processors coming to market early next year, while Intel recently unveiled its Alder Lake HX-Series chips. Intel and AMD will continue to slug it out in this crucial segment, but the biggest threat for both comes from Apple’s M1 processors, as we’ll cover in the next table.
This accounting of Arm’s market share includes Chromebook and Apple’s M1-based Macs. McCarron has just begun tracking/sharing these values, so there isn’t much historical data yet. Regardless, the implications here are clear: Fueled by Apple’s fast-growing business with its M1 CPUs in multiple flavors, Arm is making much faster advances than it did in the past.
AMD bases its server share projections on IDC’s forecasts but only accounts for the single- and dual-socket market, which eliminates four-socket (and beyond) servers, networking infrastructure and Xeon D’s (edge). As such, Mercury’s numbers differ from the numbers cited by AMD, which predict a higher market share. Here is AMD’s comment on the matter: «Mercury Research captures all x86 server-class processors in their server unit estimate, regardless of device (server, network or storage), whereas the estimated 1P [single-socket] and 2P [two-socket] TAM [Total Addressable Market] provided by IDC only includes traditional servers.»
Server CPU shipments fell during the quarter, but AMD continued its three-year streak of quarterly share gains. Intel says it is shipping its Sapphire Rapids Xeons to some customers, but we haven’t seen the general release yet. Likewise, we’re also waiting for AMD’s EPYC Genoa to come to market.
Whereas other segments exclude IoT and semi-custom (like AMD’s game console business), this accounting of the overall x86 market also includes those products and is focused primarily on the broader AMD vs Intel competition.
Mercury Research provided the following commentary: «For all-inclusive share, which counts not only PC client CPUs and servers but also IoT and semi-custom products used in items like gaming consoles, AMD gained share in the first quarter and set a new record high at 27.7 percent, beating the 25.6 percent record set last quarter. Recall last quarter AMD broke the record it had set more than 15 years ago of 25.3 percent.»
Paul Alcorn is the Deputy Managing Editor for Tom’s Hardware US. He writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage and enterprise hardware.
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