Back in the 90s: Desktop CPU sales have slipped to the level of 30 years ago

Mercury Research experts this week updated CPU shipments for the second quarter, and it was disappointing for the desktop segment: year-on-year shipment volumes fell by 15 percent, to their lowest level since the mid-1990s.
Source image: AMDAccording to the representatives of the analytical agency, it is the minimum number of delivered desktop processors for any of the quarters from the middle of the last decade of the last century to the present.
In the first quarter, desktop processor shipments declined consistently by a record 30 percent, so the situation the industry is now seeing has been incremental.For more than a decade, according to Mercury Research, laptops have been actively displacing desktop systems.
By the end of last year, PC manufacturers had accumulated a surplus of desktop processors, and these two factors combined to provide a sharp decline in new processor shipments in this segment.However, mobile processors were also shipped 30% less in the second quarter than a year ago.
Shipments of all x86-compatible processors combined in the second quarter declined year-over-year by a record 19% in the 28-year history of surveillance.
Having no data for the period before 1994, Mercury Research experts make the assumption that the PC processor market in the last quarter faced the largest decrease in sales volumes since 1984.
By the way, it did not prevent AMD from increasing its market share of all x86-compatible processors to 31,4% by the end of the second quarter, which is a historical record for this vendor.

AMD's share of the mobile processor market reached a record 27% in the second quarter

AMD has been increasing its share in the consumer processor segment for several consecutive quarters, but the past three-month period was characterized by a downward trend in PC demand.
Even in such circumstances, AMD continued to squeeze the position of Intel, and therefore the results of the second quarter increased its share to a record 27%.Image source: AMDSimilar data has provided the resource Tom's Hardware itself company, but the original post is mainly devoted to the study of statistics Mercury Research, which traditionally operates the number of processors sold, but not the revenue from their sales.
In monetary terms, AMD increased its market share for the year from 18.1% to 18.8% in the desktop segment, from 14.9% to 27% in the mobile segment, from 11.6% to 22.9% in the server segment.
Overall, in the x86-compatible processor market, which takes into account the Internet of Things and custom components like processors for gaming consoles, AMD's share of revenue figures increased in the second quarter from 16.9 to 28.1 percent, which is also a record.If we return to quantitative criteria, in the desktop segment AMD share, according to Mercury Research statistics, increased by 3.5 percentage points compared to the same quarter last year to 20.6 percent.
In quantitative terms, AMD's share in the mobile segment did not reach the self-described 27%, but was close to that level.
Compared to the second quarter of last year, in the mobile segment its share of the CPU market has increased by 4.8 percentage points to 24.8 percent, and this is also a record for the company.In quantitative terms, AMD share in the server segment is much more modest than in monetary terms, although here too it has increased over the past 12 months from 9.5 to 13.9 percent.
The difference with IDC figures in money terms (22.9%), which AMD itself relies on, may be explained by the calculation methodology - the latter takes into account server systems with one or two processor slots, while Mercury Research covers the whole market of server systems based on x86-compatible processors.
Either way, AMD's share of the server market is up for the 13th consecutive quarter.There's no exact data yet on AMD's share of the entire x86-compatible processor market for the second quarter according to Mercury Research, but that share was as high as 27.7 percent in the first quarter.
The share of Arm licensees products in the market of central processors in the first quarter of this year reached 11.3%, and there is no data for the second quarter yet.
This is great progress, considering that two years ago this share did not exceed 2%.

AMD managed to increase its market share of x86-compatible processors by 7 percentage points over the year

Tom's Hardware Guide did a tremendous job this week analyzing the Mercury Research report on the state of the CPU market in the first quarter of this year.
If we consider all x86-compatible processors, the share of AMD products in that market reached a record 27.7% in the first quarter.
The previous quarter was the first time in 15 years that this indicator exceeded the 25.3% mark, and this year the company managed not to decrease the turnover.advertisementSource image: WCCFTechWe should not, however, speak exclusively about the positive dynamics of AMD share in all market segments.
In the desktop segment, for example, it lost one percentage point over the year to a competitor, reducing its share to 18.3%.
In the mobile segment, progress was evident, as AMD strengthened its position from 18 to 22.5%.
Finally, in the traditionally inert server market the company managed to move from 8.9% to 11.6%.
The first quarter saw a decline in the supply of low-cost mobile processors, which brought the average selling price of a client processor in the market as a whole to $138, up 10% over the previous quarter, and year-on-year growth of over 30%.
In this context, processors from all manufacturers are taken into account, including desktop models, but excluding server models.
The number of desktops shipped in the quarter decreased immediately by 30%, so AMD could not demonstrate positive dynamics of its share in this segment.
But in the mobile segment AMD suffered less than Intel, which even allowed it to increase its share by 4.4 percentage points.Separately, the share of processors with Arm architecture.
According to Mercury Research, it reached 11.6% in the first quarter, not least due to the expansion of Apple branded processors.
By the way, in the server segment AMD also managed to increase its share in the first quarter against the background of falling sales volumes in the market as a whole.

AMD had to give way to Intel in desktop and mobile CPU market segments

November data from Mercury Research stated that AMD controlled about 20.1 % of the desktop CPU market, a figure that has been growing steadily since late 2017, when the Ryzen family claimed its rights. Fresh statistics state a reversal of the trend: in fact, Intel has managed to wrest 0.8 % of the desktop CPU market from AMD.

Image source: IDG

This is evidenced by the data for the fourth quarter of last year, as noted by Tom’s Hardware, citing comments from Mercury Research. AMD's share in the desktop segment fell to 19.3 % at the end of the fourth quarter. This did not prevent the company from increasing its share in the desktop segment by one percentage point for the full year 2020. The company's marketing policy now prioritizes the sale of more expensive processor models, and they are objectively sold less than cheaper ones. Here and below are AMD's share figures in physical terms, which take into account the number of processors shipped. In the mobile segment, as the source explains, AMD's loss is stronger & ;already 1.2 %. In November its share reached 20.2 % of the mobile market, so at the end of the fourth quarter it dropped to 19 %. In monetary terms these losses turned out to be stronger, because mobile processors account for about 60 % of revenues in the customer segment, and AMD has shown good dynamics in its share growth rate in previous years. It cannot be ruled out that AMD's success in the fourth quarter was hindered by a shortage of processors. Intel, if we believe the January revelations of its representatives, managed to significantly increase processor production volumes, especially in the lower price segment. Demand for Chromebooks from the educational sector remains at a high level, which allowed Intel to strengthen its position. Incidentally, AMD's share of the mobile segment grew by 2.8 percentage points in the entire 2020, so the period cannot be called a failure for the company. In the server segment, as noted by Mercury Research, AMD's fourth-quarter share rose 0.5 percentage points to 7.1 % in sequential comparison, and a respectable 2.6 percentage points year-on-year & ;. The statistics from this source cover the entire server market, without differentiating between the intended use and the number of processor sockets per system. For this reason, the share of AMD appears to be smaller than that of IDC as stated by Mercury Research. The x86-compatible processor market as a whole grew 20.1 % in the fourth quarter. On a three-month basis, AMD reduced its market share from 22.4 to 21.7 %, but gained 6.2 percentage points on a year-over-year basis.