Demand for the latest video game consoles has sent AMD’s market share for x86 CPUs to a new record high, according to a research firm.
In last year’s fourth quarter, AMD achieved a 25.6% share of the x86 CPU market, which includes PCs, servers, IoT, and consoles, according to Mercury Research. Intel sits at 74.4%, but that 25.6% beats AMD’s previous record of 25.3%, which was set 15 years ago in Q4 2006, Mercury Research President Dean McCarron said in an email.
AMD’s share went up thanks to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, which use its custom Zen 2 x86 chips. Both consoles consistently sold out last year, especially during the holiday season.
That said, AMD didn’t grow across all x86 CPU markets in Q4. In desktops, its market share dropped to 16.2%, down 3.1 points from a year ago. Here, Intel secured an 83.8% share amid the company’s launch of new 12th Generation Core "Alder Lake" processors for desktops.
Meanwhile, in x86 server CPUs, AMD saw some steady gains. According to Mercury Research, the company’s share inched up from 7.1% a year ago to 10.7% in a market segment Intel has historically dominated. This marked the "eleventh consecutive quarter of server CPU share gain for AMD," McCarron said.
In laptop-based processors, AMD saw similar growth against Intel. However, Mercury Research is also noticing that Apple’s M1 chips for Macs are helping to lift the market for Arm-based processors against x86 chips from Intel and AMD.
"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 9.5%, up from 8.3% last quarter and nearly triple the 3.4% from a year ago,” McCarron said.
“Apple had very strong growth in the quarter, so the gains were driven by higher M1 unit volumes rather than Chromebook Arm processors,” he added.