The Mercury Research CPU market share results are in for the second quarter of 2022, and the news isn’t great — desktop CPU shipments dropped to their lowest level in nearly three decades. Dean McCarron from Mercury Research says the year-over-year decline is the largest in the firm’s records, which stretches back 28 years, and predicts it was the biggest since 1984 (36 years). The decline came as OEMs reduced their inventory, drastically reducing demand in the quarter. Somehow AMD managed to carve out gains in both unit share and revenue during the quarter, though.
According to the recent earnings report from Intel, AMD, and Nvidia, the recovery will be a long one. Intel issued a dire earnings report last week — the company lost money for the first time in decades, partially driven by PC declines. Intel also announced it was delaying its critical Xeon Sapphire Rapids data center chips and killing off another failing business unit, Optane; the sixth unit retired since new CEO Pat Gelsinger took over.
In contrast, AMD’s revenue was up 70% year-over-year as the company continued to improve its already-great profitability. AMD is firing on all cylinders and will launch its Ryzen 7000 CPUs, RDNA 3 GPUs, and EPYC Genoa data center processors on schedule.
That consistent execution continues to pay off. AMD took big strides in the mobile/laptop market again, setting another record for unit share in that segment with 24.8%. AMD also gained in the server market for the 13th consecutive quarter, reaching 13.9% of the market. Notably, AMD’s quarterly gain in servers is the largest we’ve seen in our historical data, which dates back to 2017, and it set a record for server revenue share. AMD also set a new record of 31.4% of the total market share for x86 processors.
It’s safe to say that all signs point to a continued PC slump — Intel and AMD expect the desktop and notebook PC market to be down double-digits through the end of the year. Nvidia also announced that it had drastically underperformed its guide by $1.4 billion due to slumping gaming GPU sales, and its partners expect up to a 50% decline in GPU shipments this year. It’s hard to gauge how much of that volume was actually destined for gaming PCs as opposed to cryptominers, so the tea leaves are murky.
Arm CPU market share reached 9.4%, a decline from 11.3% last quarter. McCarron says that much of this was due to Apple’s sales of its M1 Macs being down last quarter, dragging down the overall share of Arm chips. However, Arm may have grown within the Chromebook segment.
Apple encountered supply disruptions during the quarter due to lockdowns in China, impacting its ability to ship units and likely impacting its share gains against x86.
You can find the raw numbers broken out segment by segment in the tables below.
- In desktop, AMD revenue share increased 0.7 share points year over year to 18.8%.
- In notebook, AMD revenue share increased 12.1 share points year over year to 27.0% — an all-time high for AMD.
- In server, AMD revenue share increased 11.3 share points year over year to 22.9%.
- In overall x86, AMD revenue share increased 11.2 share points year over year to 28.1% — an all-time high for AMD.
| 2Q22 | 1Q22 | 4Q21 | 3Q21 | 2Q21 | 1Q21 | 4Q20 | 3Q20 | 2Q20 | 1Q20 | 4Q19 | 3Q19 | 2Q19 | 1Q2019 | 4Q18 | 3Q18 | 2Q18 | 1Q18 | 4Q17 | 3Q17 | 2Q17 | 1Q17 | 4Q16 | 3Q16 | |
| AMD Desktop Unit Share | 20.6% | 18.3% | 16.2% | 17.0% | 17.1% | 19.3% | 19.3% | 20.1% | 19.2% | 18.6% | 18.3% | 18% | 17.1% | 17.1% | 15.8% | 13% | 12.3% | 12.2% | 12.0% | 10.9% | 11.1% | 11.4% | 9.9% | 9.1% |
| Quarter over Quarter / Year over Year (pp) | +2.3% / +3.5% | +2.1 / -1.0 | -0.8 / -3.1 | -0.1 / -3.1 | -2.3 / -2.1 | +0.1 / +0.7 | -0.8 / +1.0 | +0.9 / +2.1 | +0.6 / +2.1 | +0.3 / +1.5 | +0.3 / +2.4 | +0.9 / +5 | Flat / +4.8 | +1.3 / +4.9 | +2.8 / +3.8 | +0.7 / +2.1 | +0.1 / +1.2 | +0.2 / +0.8 | +1.1 / +2.1 | -0.2 / +1.8 | -0.3 / – | +1.5 / – | +0.8 / – | – |
The decline in the PC market began as the pandemic receded and global economic turmoil and inflation mounted. AMD continues its streak of market share gains, reaching 20.6% of the unit share in the quarter.
“AMD’s desktop business experienced a modest rebound from the declines of the first quarter, while Intel’s desktop CPU shipments continued to decline. Intel appeared to be impacted by continued inventory corrections lowering shipments in the quarter; AMD’s business showed no significant inventory impacts and share was gained,” McCarron said.
| 2Q22 | 1Q22 | 4Q21 | 3Q21 | 2Q21 | 1Q21 | 4Q20 | 3Q20 | 2Q20 | 1Q20 | Q419 | 3Q19 | 2Q19 | 1Q2019 | 4Q18 | 3Q18 | 2Q18 | |
| AMD Mobile Unit Share | 24.8% | 22.5% | 21.6% | 22.0% | 20.0% | 18.0% | 19% | 20.2% | 19.9% | 17.1% | 16.2% | 14.7% | 14.1% | 13.1% | 12.2% | 10.9% | 8.8% |
| Quarter over Quarter / Year over Year (pp) | +2.3% / +4.8% | +0.9 / +4.4 | -0.4 / +2.6 | +2.0 / +1.8 | +1.9 / +0.01 | -1.0 / +1.1 | -1.2 / +2.8 | +0.3 / +5.5 | +2.9 / +5.8 | +0.9 / +3.2 | +1.5 / +4.0 | +0.7 / +3.8 | +1.0 / +5.3 | +0.9 / ? |
AMD set yet another market share record in the notebook market, an impressive feat given that it doesn’t sell as many chips into the low-end segment as Intel. This marks yet another market share record for AMD in the mobile space.
“While AMD had slight growth in mobile CPU shipments in the second quarter, it was well below normal levels and both AMD and Intel had significant on-year declines in mobile CPU units shipped; both suppliers appear to be coping with a downturn in CPU demand, though Intel was disproportionately affected and lost share to AMD as a result,” said McCarron.
| 2Q22 | 1Q22 | 4Q21 | 3Q21 | 2Q21 | 1Q21 | 4Q20 | 3Q20 | 2Q20 | 1Q20 | 4Q19 | 3Q19 | 2Q19 | 1Q2019 | 4Q18 | 3Q18 | 2Q18 | 4Q17 | |
| AMD Server Unit Share | 13.9% | 11.6% | 10.7% | 10.2% | 9.5% | 8.9% | 7.1% | 6.6% | 5.8% | 5.1% | 4.5% | 4.3% | 3.4% | 2.9% | 3.2% | 1.6% | 1.4% | 0.8% |
| Quarter over Quarter / Year over Year (pp) | +2.3% / +4.4% | +0.9 / +2.7 | +0.5% / +3.6 | +0.7 / +3.6 | +0.6 / +3.7 | +1.8 / +3.8 | +0.5 / +2.6 | +0.8 / +2.3 | +0.7 / +2.4 | +0.6 / 2.2 | +0.2 / +1.4 | +0.9 / +2.7 | +0.5 / +2.0 | -0.3 / – | +1.6 / 2.4 | +0.2 / – |
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 predicts 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.”
AMD continued its three-year streak of quarterly share gains and made the largest single quarterly gain as far back as our records go (2017). AMD gained in the server market for the 13th consecutive quarter, reaching 13.9% of the market. AMD set both shipment and revenue records in the quarter.
Intel continues to suffer in this segment, and it also announced its Sapphire Rapids will be delayed yet again. The company hasn’t set a discernable date for the full launch, but we expect that to come in Q1 next year.
| Arm vs x86 Market Share | 2Q22 | 1Q22 | 4Q21 | 3Q21 | 2Q21 | 1Q21 | 4Q20 | 2Q20 |
| Arm Unit Share | 9.5% | 11.3% | 10.3% | 8.3% | ~7.0% | 5.9% | 3.4% | Less than 2% |
“Our estimate for ARM CPU PC client share (including Chromebooks and Apple’s M1 based Macs with X86 desktop and mobile CPUs in the total client size estimate) is 9.4 percent, down from 11.3 percent last quarter and up from 7.7 percent a year ago. Apple’s Mac business was down significantly on quarter, which dragged ARM share down. We noted that within the Chromebook market it appeared that ARM’s share may have increased slightly in the quarter,” said McCarron.
| 2Q22 | 1Q22 | 4Q21 | 3Q21 | 2Q21 | 1Q21 | 4Q20 | 3Q20 | 2Q20 | 1Q20 | 4Q19 | 3Q19 | 2Q19 | 4Q18 | 3Q18 | |
| AMD Overall x86 | 31.4% | 27.7% | 25.6% | 24.6% | 22.5% | 20.7% | 21.7% | 22.4% | 18.3% | 14.8% | 15.1% | 14.6% | 13.9% | 12.3% | 10.6% |
| Overall PP Change QoQ / YoY | +3.7 / +8.9 | +2.1 / +7.0 | +1.0 / +3.9 | +2.1 / +2.2 | +1.8 / +4.2 | -1.0 / +6.0 | -0.7 / +6.2 | +4.1 / +6.6 | +3.5 / +1.2 (+3.7?) | -0.7 / ? | +0.9 / +3.2 | +0.7 / +4 | ? | ? | – |
Whereas the other segments above exclude IoT and semi-custom units (like AMD’s game console business), this accounting of the overall x86 market also includes those products.
AMD has gained an incredible 8.9 percentage points year-over-year and 3.7 points over the prior quarter, setting yet another new record.