Wednesday, February 3rd 2021
Despite AMD Momentum, Intel Claws Back Market Share in Both Desktop and Mobile
AMD's CPU offerings are generally considered to best Intel's competition, especially since the company's Zen 3, Ryzen-5000 series of CPUs launched to great critical and customer acclaim. However, silicon performance can only get you so far - one other issue impacting market penetration is availability of said processors. As AMD fights for constrained wafer supply from TSMC - in no small part due to their focusing of their entire portfolio on the company's highly-sought 7 nm process - users worldwide are generally seeing insufficient stocks of AMD silicon to satisfy their needs. And as such, it seems that at least some users are going with Intel solutions, due to their higher availability in the market.
According to a report from Mercury Research, AMD's constrained chip supply has led the company to a market share loss QoQ. AMD's desktop penetration fell from 20.1% to 19.3% in a single quarter, and its mobile market share saw a similar decrease, going from a 20.1% share down to 19.1%. Of course, not only from market share and shipments are a company's financials made of; AMD ushered in higher ASP (Average Selling Price) for its products, leading the company to a 50% increase in YoY revenue. This doesn't mean AMD is selling less CPUs, however; the x86 CPU market grew a massive 20.1% YoY, so AMD is actually shipping more product than in previous years - it just couldn't account for the entirety of that x86 market increase. Overall, and considering AMD's desktop, mobile, and server markets, the company's x86 market share decreased by 0.7% in Q4 2020 to 21.7% - still a very significant increase, YoY, from its previous 15.5% of the market pie.
Sources:
Mercury Research, via Tom's Hardware
According to a report from Mercury Research, AMD's constrained chip supply has led the company to a market share loss QoQ. AMD's desktop penetration fell from 20.1% to 19.3% in a single quarter, and its mobile market share saw a similar decrease, going from a 20.1% share down to 19.1%. Of course, not only from market share and shipments are a company's financials made of; AMD ushered in higher ASP (Average Selling Price) for its products, leading the company to a 50% increase in YoY revenue. This doesn't mean AMD is selling less CPUs, however; the x86 CPU market grew a massive 20.1% YoY, so AMD is actually shipping more product than in previous years - it just couldn't account for the entirety of that x86 market increase. Overall, and considering AMD's desktop, mobile, and server markets, the company's x86 market share decreased by 0.7% in Q4 2020 to 21.7% - still a very significant increase, YoY, from its previous 15.5% of the market pie.
114 Comments on Despite AMD Momentum, Intel Claws Back Market Share in Both Desktop and Mobile
Heck even if AMD's new CPUs were in stock I'd still not buy them. Pricing is terrible. $450 - $500 for a 7% performance increase is games, not enticing in the least.
Can't buy Renoir (no stock)
Can't buy Ryzen 5000-series (no stock)
Can't buy Radeon 6000-series (no stock)
Can't buy Radeon 5000-series (no stock)
Can't buy a single AMD laptop with more than 8GB soldered, un-upgradeable RAM (no design wins)
It's truly sad how if I want a decent laptop I have to go Intel. Such cripplingly-bad specs preventing any AMD laptops from being worth buying.
It really shouldn't be that hard to find a 12-month old processor with 16GB dual-channel RAM and a display that isn't a better fit for the sub-$500 entry-level compromise models, but it is. In many cases, it's not even that there's no stock, it's that the OEM (Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo) simply don't even offer anything that meets those pretty ordinary, exactly-what-anyone-sensible-would-be-looking-for criteria.
Lenovo has quite a number of Renoir models either ready to ship or ordered in a short timeframe. Off the top of my head I can think of the X13 that you can customize with 16GB of soldered-down 3200, but there are other size models on there. They've been running some mad sales in the past half year. That said, Lenovo is not a company you want to buy the base config from, same as Dell.
Not cheap, obviously, but thin and lights with decent specs never are. And well, AMD wants to shed the budget brand image...
Other than that, agree, the availability is garbage and these results shouldn't be of any surprise. Regardless of whether AMD's problems stem from TSMC shortages or part suppliers, newly announced Cezanne can look forward to the same lukewarm success as Renoir if supply does not improve.
Big OEM: We need consistent high volume supply, our margins are razor thin and we can't risk production downtime due to lack of parts. How many chips can you give us each month?
Intel: We make 240 million CPUs a year, we can guarantee you 100,000 every month on the first of the month, with an option to extend that to 150,000 if notified 3 months in advance. You can also pay us 90 days net, we don't need the cash.
Big OEM: AMD how about you?
AMD: Well we need to get with TSMC and make sure our allocation gets here on time, plus we are moving some allocations for Microsoft and Sony. Marketing is also telling us we're getting flack from users in the DIY space which is causing some negative press, so we need to reallocate some of our wafers to GPUs, we're also trying to make server inroads and you know how big those chips are....
Big OEM: Uhhh... We'll get back to you AMD. Hello Intel.
Where's my "new, unopened box"?
Where's my retail warranty and consumer rights protection?
Ebay is for used goods and scalpers only.
Renoir availability is region-specific. The most appealing options from Lenovo, for example are the Ideapad 7, the Ideapad 7 Slim, and the Yoga Slim. 4800U doesn't exist. 4700U only offered in 8GB soldered, and if I narrow myself to the UK market for a UK keyboard layout, 4500U is the only thing they'll sell. Hell, I found ONE laptop in the entire UK market this morning with >4600U and >8GB RAM and it was an imported Huawei Matebook D with a US keyboard.
I was on the "notify me" for the Ideapad 7 Slim and Yoga Slim with 4800U since February last year and not only have I never been notified, those models have actually been removed from the Lenovo UK website altogether. We get 8GB soldered garbage with worthless low-gamut screens and low-end CPUs. I'll blame Brexit because that's as illogical and stupid as anything else!
You're right though, If Cezanne doesn't get decent global design wins and AMD can't supply OEMs with the parts in time, it'll be a massive wall of unavailable mediocrity like Renoir. Tiger lake CPU performance and efficiency is still nowhere near Renoir but I'm tempted to defect to the inferior CPU simply because all of the good quality laptops with proper build-quality and nice screens are intel-only.
Yeah everyone prefers a retail CPU, but don't lump Renoir in with the rest of the "no stock". You can easily get one by the end of the week. Without scalper prices. Without being "used". Just apply the usual eBay-fu, look for the reputable sellers with an ebay approved 30-day policy.
As for budget laptops, can't think of much aside from the
Acer Swift the cheap ultrabook with the incredibly shitty screen. Sadly, part of the "we're not the budget option" move.
Would you want, for example, a German keyboard laptop bought through a third-party with no warranty at 25% higher than the MSRP?
It's not that Renoir laptops are impossible to buy, it's that none of the ones worth buying are available.
There's a Yoga Slim 6 config with a 4700U/16GB/1TB NVMe? Looks available. I'm a little rusty on my mental math exchange rate. Dunno how much you're willing to spend, but below a certain budget it's going to be impossible to find any acceptable thin and light regardless of hardware.
Im surprised at the lack of X and T series Thinkpads over the pond
Intel :- Here's your cheque :pimp:
I would bet this will be the same scene in Q1, perhaps even worse for AMD as they reportedly had 70-80% of their Q4 TSMC capacity mapped to PS5/Xbox. Their Q4 sales would mostly reflect what they got from TSMC / GloFlo in Q3, so Q1 is going to reflect that Q4 allocation.
Also - at least in Q4 - they likely had plenty of Zen 2 parts left to sell. Those are appear to be getting rarer now, meaning they have even less to sell. I would not expect to see AMD's supply situation let up until Q2 at the earliest.
Edit: I would like to see how the Macbook Air / Pro M1 is doing in market share. These are two of the most popular laptops on the planet, their switch to M1 should be having an impact.
Ryzen 2000 Mobile was Zen, Ryzen 3000 Mobile was Zen+. Both were only up to 4 cores and while especially Zen+ was competitive they did not beat Intel competition in anything. Perhaps price but nobody but OEMs really know that part.
Renoir is the first Ryzen that is noticeably better than what Intel competition and it came out in March 2020. A year is not that long time and AMD is noticeably picking up the pace - for a simple example just look at the "design wins" counts in the respective announcements. OEMs are taking note and rapidly moving there but the inertia in notebook market is real. Supply constraints obviously are not helping either.
I'm not sure I've even seen those and more importantly, what's the point?!
Renoir 8C/16T was a high-end, expensive part clearly targeting mobile feature sets and mobile TDPs. It's very out of place in the desktop APU market because those are mainly bought by people looking for ultra-budget machines that are too cheap to allocate budget to a dGPU, or the SFF crowd that wants something so tiny there's not even room for a dGPU and therefore expect near-zero GPU performance.
Desktop CPU availability of the 3000-series was great during Renoir's market window. 3600, 3700X, 3900X all fantastic options with plenty of availability and regular discounts.I hope you're right.
I'm not seeing much from big laptop OEMs even in the "coming soon" or "out of stock" categories though. I think @RandallFlagg probably hit the nail on the head with this post.
Zen 3 was such a joke of a launch, I ended up returning my Asus TUF X570 mobo, as both the 5900x and 5950x sold out in seconds, and instead bought an intel rig heavily discounted for Black Friday, can’t go wrong with an over $250 discount over msrp after rebates, and the product was readily available.
Rig runs like a dream and I never looked back.
Sorry AMD, you lost my business, maybe Zen 4 will be better?
www.notebookcheck.net/Polish-source-claims-Nvidia-and-Intel-worked-together-to-block-the-marketing-of-premium-AMD-Ryzen-4000-laptops-with-high-end-GPUs-in-2020.515615.0.html
www.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/yoga/yoga-2-in-1-series/Yoga-6/p/88YGC601532
As for desktop Renoir, it isn't helped by the core count increase but the 4350G is a pretty good value in light of the 3300X AWOL. Well, amongst AMD parts at least. Like I said, any of the three makes a good HTPC or memory overclocker, not a mainstream use case but it's there.
Wouldn't be surprised if Cezanne stayed tray-only as well. Relying on chiplet parts makes it easy to pump out 3600 like it's nobody's business, but the monolithic chips are where the market share is going to be.