AMD set a new record for its overall processor market share (as far as x86 processors are concerned), despite a drop in total sales of these chips.
The processor figures for the first quarter of 2022 were analyzed by Mercury Research, which found that AMD had reached an all-time high of 27.7% market share in processors (Intel owning the rest, of course). That’s a big increase from 20.7% in the same quarter of 2021, meaning that year-over-year AMD has racked up 7% market share (a one-third increase).
This includes all x86 silicon, which means not just desktop, laptop, and server processors, but also chips customized for game console tastes (as well as Internet of Things devices as well).
Mercury’s Dean McCarron told Tom’s Hardware: “For an all-inclusive share…AMD gained market share in the first quarter and set a new record high of 27.7%, beating the record of 25.6% set last trimester. Recall that in the last quarter, AMD broke the record it had set more than 15 years ago by 25.3%”.
So, as you can see, Team Red is now in a stronger position than it was during the company’s previous peak a decade and a half ago, with the promise of moving forward. more and make new gains.
The overall processor market fell across all sectors, including a rather steep 30% quarter-over-quarter drop in the number of units moved for desktop PCs. That’s the biggest quarter-over-quarter slide ever, to put it into perspective.
With desktop processors, AMD held an 18.3% share, reversing some of the recent decline the company has seen over the past year – in the first quarter of 2021, a year ago, the company was in fact at 19.3%. But the Q1 2022 figure of 18.3% is up sharply from the previous quarter, where AMD fell to 16.2%, its worst performance since 2018 (Intel’s Alder Lake processors undoubtedly generating good sales for Team Blue during this last quarter of 2021).
For notebook processor market share, AMD reached 22.5% (vs. 21.6% in the previous quarter – a solid progression).
However, one of the most telling changes has been in the server market, where AMD reached 11.6% market share, up from 8.9% a year ago, with steady gains every trimester.
Analysis: AMD server gains must be a concern for Intel
Even though AMD’s server market share is still relatively modest, Intel will no doubt be concerned about the erosion that is occurring in this particular area. Team Red now owns 11.6% of the market, and that’s up sharply from a 5.1% share at the start of 2020 – there’s a level of consistency in AMD’s upward progression that will be of real concern for the dominant power Intel. Indeed, if we go back in time to 2018, AMD had almost no market share in this area.
AMD’s Epyc processors were nothing short of a revelation, with the recently launched Milan-X chips with 3D V cache, big performance improvements and the promise of serious power savings (cutting costs to term, which is, of course, a crucial aspect of these server products).
AMD will certainly be pleased with its progress in servers, and overall for the total x86 share, helped by the supply of console chips as we’ve already mentioned.
The other glaring point in this pile of numbers is the severity of this decline in desktop processor sales, with a steep 30% drop. Both Intel and AMD saw numbers drop in this regard, but AMD fared better, Mercury Research theorizes, as during the quarter retailers sold off excess CPU inventory — and there was more for it. Intel.
In other words, AMD hasn’t produced as many desktop CPUs lately, and we’ve seen that in some of the stockouts that have happened, as Team Red prioritizes the production of these Epyc chips, which is understandable as they’re bigger profit generators than mainstream models.
Declining desktop processor sales may also be linked to people with lower disposable income as various economic headwinds increasingly come into play, such as rising energy costs, inflation, etc. . Also, keep in mind that the pandemic and people working from home have spurred hardware upgrades and sales lately, and we may be seeing that activity wane now.