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Advanced micro devices gained market share in the x86 processor market in client and server categories, according to market researcher Mercury research.
Competition is always fierce in the x86 processor market, which nowadays means the rivalry between AMD and Intel. Intel has captured some market share in the Internet of Things (IoT) market.
With the exception of IoT and semi-custom products (including gaming console chips, which AMD makes), the market continued to favor AMD, returning to quarterly and annualized gains in both client and server segments.
In the first quarter ended March 31, Mercury Research analyst Dean McCarron said x86 processor shipments were in line with typical seasonal trends for both client and server processors, with all segments down moderately on the quarter, as normal is for a first quarter.
Last quarter marked the first time since early 2020, when the COVID pandemic began, that market results were completely normal across the desktop, mobile and server segments.
IoT/SoC processor shipments fell much more than normal as reduced console demand impacted AMD's SoC shipments. AMD mentioned in its analyst call that gaming revenue in particular fell 48% in the first quarter compared to a year earlier. Because the aging consoles are sold in smaller numbers, AMD expects the annual comparison to decline in both the second quarter and the second half of 2024.
Because last year's quarter continued to be impacted by inventory correction efforts, the metrics and stock movements reported here from recent quarters reflect suppliers who differed in the depth and timing of their inventory corrections, rather than indicating the sales share of inventory. the PC market, McCarron said.
The corrections were largely resolved by Q3 2023, so current quarter stock results are likely in line with actual CPU sales, and by Q3 2024 most comparisons should be valid – but the years are certainly not. 'T.
For the all-inclusive share, which includes not only PC client CPUs and servers but also IoT and semi-custom products used in things like gaming consoles, Intel gained 2.4 percentage points this quarter. The driver of the gains here was AMD's shrinking SoC business. While AMD gained overall client and server share, the move was far less than what was needed to overcome dramatically lower SoC shipments. Intel also gained market share this year, again thanks to AMD's lower SoC shipments.
Total share excluding IoT and semi-custom products remained in AMD's favor, once again posting quarterly and full-year profits in both client and server segments. Both Intel and AMD saw lower shipments
However, on the quarter, AMD's decline in both total client and server CPUs was relatively smaller than Intel's, helping AMD gain market share.
Intel did gain market share in mobile client in the first quarter as it continued to ramp up Raptor Lake cores (while Meteor Lake also saw small growth, it had lost a small base in the previous quarter and its advance was slower than expected .Intel noted in their According to earnings, packaging capacity was a limiting factor at Meteor Lake's
shipments), McCarron said.
As the Raptor Lake disaster continued, Intel shipped an increasing number of entry-level processors, both the “Intel Processor” N100 and N200 CPUs as well as older Celeron processors – in fact, shipments of entry-level processors were partially up from the quarter offsetting seasonal drops in regular CPUs. AMD's mobile shipments fell more than Intel's, resulting in the market share loss, with the decline occurring in AMD's oldest mobile CPU cores.
Market share changes in the desktop market were the opposite of those in the mobile market, with AMD having nearly flat CPU shipments for desktops this quarter – which is much better than typical seasonal trends, and Intel showing slightly lower than typical seasonal declines .
AMD's strong desktop in a typically sharply declining quarter resulted in a relatively large quarterly and annual market share increase for the first quarter. For AMD, strength in desktop came from surprisingly strong Vermeer core deliveries and the emergence of the new desktop version of the Phoenix Point APU. McCarron said that while Intel's Raptor Lake 14xxx series CPUs grew strongly this quarter, they were replacing the previous generation 13xxx series (also based on Raptor Lake), so there was no net benefit from the disaster.
Both suppliers saw their stronger customer segment largely offset by the weaker segment, so that the net customer share only moved slightly.
As noted above, the server CPU market saw typical seasonal declines this quarter. Last quarter was the only positive quarter-over-quarter growth server processors have seen in 2023, but any increase in baseline demand last quarter was more than overwhelmed by seasonal dynamics. causing shipments to decline in the first quarter. Both vendors saw declines very close to seasonal norms, but AMD's were slightly smaller declines than Intel's and AMD's stock was up on the quarter (recall that Intel saw its first decline in Q4 2023 gained quarterly market share in the server sector in almost five years, so this was a one-off event for the time being).
AMD's stock is up significantly from the year before, and AMD server CPU unit shipments also rose from the year before. Intel's refusal. The vendors did not provide much insight into the CPU dynamics of servers in their revenues
discussions, but for AMD it was clear that Genoa is the main driver of growth this year.
AMD also shipped its MI300A product in the first quarter and this doesn't count as a CPU; the MI300A is a hybrid CPU/GPU accelerator product. If these units had been counted as CPUs, AMD's stock would have been higher last quarter.
Estimates showed that shipments of Arm PC CPUs were broadly flat this quarter, with declining shipments of processors in Apple's Macs nearly offset by a modest increase in shipments of Chromebook CPUs.
Mercury Research's estimate for the share of ARM PC clients (including Chromebooks and Apple's M-series Macs with X86 desktop and mobile CPUs in the total client size estimate) in the first quarter is 11.1%, a increase from a revised fourth quarter estimate of 10.3%.
Mercury Researched noted that it is very likely that Via's joint venture share of Zhaoxin is growing, but we have extremely limited insight into this small segment of the CPU business.