Intel Loses Market Share to AMD

diverge_s wrote to mention an article examining Intel's market share loss to AMD in the fourth quarter of 2005. From the article: "Sales of Intel-based desktop PCs fell 22.3 percent during the fourth quarter, according to Current Analysis. As a result, sales of AMD-based desktops took the lead during the pivotal fourth-quarter holiday shopping season. AMD chips were found in 52.5 percent of desktop PCs sold in U.S. retail stores during that period."

VIIV

[F_Scentura (250214)]

Their new push for quality engineering over marketing fluff will surely give them the lead again!

Re:VIIV

[Speare (84249)]

How about that move to change the motto from "Intel Inside!" to "Intel Aside!"

Re:VIIV

[canuck57 (662392)]

Their new push for quality engineering over marketing fluff will surely give them the lead again!

I am still ticked at my PERL mobo w. P4 HT 2.4GHz that died just out of warrenty.

If Intel want's back, cheaper, faster, cooler and more reliable come to mind. AMD has this over Intel at the moment and I have a 1.2GHz AMD that keeps on ticking.... so naturally one of those dual core AMD 64 X2 systems is on my list.

Godd quality and low prices work :)

[gasmonso (929871)]

AMD just proves that regardless of your advertising budget, it all comes down to good performance and good price. I don't think I have ever seen an AMD commercial, whereas Intel was all over the TV. Dell has finally taken notice and will start widespread use of AMD chips soon. Thanks for the giving Intel some competition AMD!

http://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]

Re:Point of interest

[jhutch2000 (801707)]

You aren't looking at comparable chips, then. At similar performance marks, the AMD chips are cheaper than their Intel counterparts.

Re:Point of interest

[Albanach (527650)]

You don't tell us what you're comparing - it's like saying I can buy a Ford for 15k or a Merc for 30k therefore Merc are uncompetitive.

pricewatch.com [pricewatch.com] Says the slowest Sempron being produced is the 2200+ and you can have it delivered for $57. For $60 you can get a 2.2Ghz Celeron which is no match for AMD's processor. The 2.2Ghz P4 costs $79 delivered, $22 more than the AMD offering.

The reason all those AMD chips appeared before Christmas was because they are so competitive at the lower end. When you match that with their server options AMD are wiping the floor with Intel at almost every level.

Cache...

[brunes69 (86786)]

Yeah but a Sempron 2200+ will stomp all over a 2.2 Celeron. It has way more cache ( 128k/256k in the Sempron vs 8k/128K L2 in the Celeron) and also a generally better pipeline. You can't judge a CPU on MHZ alone.

Re:Cache...

[freidog (706941)]

Actualy the socket A Semrpon's are nothing special. They're stripped down versions of the old AthlonXPs with a new system that rates them against Celerons (So AMD can put bigger numbers on slower chips).
Now, the first Netburst based Celerons, the 400mhz FSB / 128KiB L2 parts, are some of the worst chips intel produced since the cacheless Celeron 300s...

A more appropriate comparison of budget chips today would be the S754 Sempron 2500+ - 3100+ against the Celeron D 2.53 - 3.06. They stack up fairly comperabely in overall performance (Sempron wins for games, Celeron wins for multimedia), and prices are almost identical 63-80 for AMD, 66-80 for Intel.

AMD still has the price advantage against many P4s, but in the budget world it's a much closer race.

Re:Point of interest

[corngrower (738661)]

Three things here. First, yes Intel sells more server chips than AMD, but AMD is making strong inroads in this area. In fact, AMD has been limited by their lack of fabrication capacity. The margins in this arena are fairly high, and with the new Dresden Fab coning on line this year, Intel is going to take a big hit. If I'm AMD, and have limited production capacity, I'mg going to be producing chips that give me the biggest margin, and that's going to be the high end chips. Because of their superior performance, AMDs chips will command a price premium to Intels chips.

Secondly, corporate desktops. The best that AMD can do is to try to underprice Intel, which will be difficult since Intel does have better process technology. Expect prices of the midline chips to fall as Intel lowers prices to maintain market share. With margins as thin as they are in this arena, AMD needs to work to maintain its performance edge on the high end chips where it can command better margins.

In laptop processors, the Pentium-M's excellent perfomance/power ratio means that AMD is not about to overtake Intel's number one position. AMD's Sempron may have better performance, but it also 25% (AFAIK) more power hungry. This is an important market segment, and while AMD puts up some competition, Intel is still the strongest. The price margins in the market aren't as large as those of the server market, but they're still better than the margins desktop market.

It's Intel's more advanced process technology that gives them the edge in producing the low power laptop chips, not the manufacturing volume. I wouldn't say that AMD is years behind Intel, just 10 months behind, which is far enough behind to be at a definite disadvantage. AMD should be concerned with improving its process technology while also trying to improve production capacity.

Re:Point of interest

[GmAz (916505)]

I used to work at CompUSA and was in charge of the desktop department so I saw every new machine come in and personally set up the demos and the price tags. I saw numerous HP, Gateway, Compaq and Emachine models come out with AMD64 processors around 3000+ to 3700+. The basically identical Intel model always cost at least $250 more. And since we, the salesman, had pretty much free reign as long as we sold computers put whatever we wanted on the computers. I loved doing benchmarks and the AMD always came out ahead. Only a couple times did intel beat out AMD and it was usually the new Prescott cores, though not new anymore, until AMD came out with their new cores. I don't consider myself a fanboy of one particular manufacturer, I am a fanboy of cost vs. performance. For the past four years, AMD has won me over.

Beige boxes?

[by Anonymous Coward]

I wonder whether AMD's success is an indication that PC's are well into their commodities phase and so el-cheapo models at Best Buy are (more than) sufficient for people's use? Intel's in the pricier boxes, so they stand/fall with those vendors.

Re:Beige boxes?

[HermanAB (661181)]

Well, especially, when the pricier models are worse than the cheaper ones... "Style, is the ability to distinguish quality, without looking at the price tag."

Re:Beige boxes?

[GmAz (916505)]

Not really. Bestbuy, CompUSA, Circuit City all have salemen working the floor. I was once a salesman for CompUSA and did rather good at it. 90% of people buy what the salesman tell them to buy. You get people uneducated in the field of computers and look to the salesmen as the "pros". I sold quite a few $4000 systems because I could read the customer. If that person had money, I could sell him on the high end machine no problem. The line "In computers, the old saying 'you get what you pay for' auctually applies". Talk about Hook Line and Sinker. But, you also made money there based on the service plans you sold and was based primarily on a percent of gross sold vs. gross service plan. People wanted to see big numbers on the front of the computer and a low price tag. AMD machines reigned. Espically since I set them up with the AMD machine right next to its Intel counterpart. Lower priced machines made me more money as it does every salesman. I think salesmen have figured this out and that is why AMD took that large market share. And guess what, when more AMD machines were pushed out, people started realizing that they were as good as the covited Intel machines. Word spread and customers started looking into AMD and not just saying that they only thing they wanted was Intel because its the only thing they know about computers. Gotta hand it to Intel for the A+ marketing strategy.

Re:El cheapo?

[Twid (67847)]

I'm calling you out on the "from day one" statement. The AMD K5 was not exactly the pinnacle of performance, features, or price competitiveness. AMD is doing well now, no argument there. I'd like to see an article that compares total chip chipments worldwide, though, rather than say limited statements like "52% of all retail desktop sales, in the USA, in the 4th quarter".

In related news, my pants were the leading distribution method for iPod nanos, in the USA, in California, in my house, yesterday.

Re:El cheapo?

[dougmc (70836)]

from day one they've been in the business of making better products, not cheaper products.

Eh? I don't know about `day 1', but it wasn't that long ago that AMD was lagging behind Intel in terms of performance, power consumption (though that wasn't such a concern back then) and such. For example, the K5 was intended to compete against the Pentium chips, but the Pentium Pro came out almost immediately after the K5 did and it blew the K5 away. The K6's came closer to beating the Intel offerings, but even then, the Intel chips had a small performance lead, and the fact that 3Dnow never took off further hurt the K6 chips. Back then, people bought AMD because it was cheaper, not because it was better.

Going back even further, the AMD 8086, 80286, 80386 and Am486 chips generally were just clones of the Intel offerings -- with similar performance, but coming out some time later at a lower price.

But things have changed. AMD has finally caught up to and passed Intel in many respects, and I suspect that the reason that Intel is still selling so many chips is more due to interia than anything else.

Marketing misstep?

[PornMaster (749461)]

Anyone looked into the possible marketing misstep by Intel stopping marketing their processors by clock speed?

Re:Marketing misstep?

[Sique (173459)]

It was a 'misstep' they had to take with going away from the Netburst architecture anyway. The Pentium M and successors all have much lower clock rates with still retaining comparable performance. For low power devices the high clock rates were hell.

meh...

[DigDuality (918867)]

I'm not really a fanboy on either side of this Chevy/Ford arguement. They both support Trusted Computing which makes me wish there was another option out there.

Just wait 'til the Intel-based Macs come out

[Jim in Buffalo (939861)]

When the Intel-based Macs hit the market, Intel processors will be found in 52.6 percent of desktop PCs, so there!

Does anyone even know what chip they have?

[ZachPruckowski (918562)]

I don't mean this in a negative way, but what percentage of the computer buying public even knows about AMD? I mean, it seems to me that the average person couldn't tell you what chip is in his computer. I mean, the answer I usually get to that question is "Dell" or "HP". So basically, what I'm saying is that it may not be AMD chips that are doing well, but the particular brands they're in?

Is AMD profitable?

[keester (646050)]

That's the biggest question in my mind. Market share is important, but will AMD be able to sustain whatever growth they have accomplished? So, within the last few years, they've opened up new fabrication plants, and probably they have more room for growth. Still, it will be interesting to see their earnings (revenue and profit).

Re:Is AMD profitable?

[beavis88 (25983)]

Barely, but yes -

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=amd [yahoo.com]

How's the laptop market doing?

[Fearan (600696)]

With the decreasing market share of desktops in the consumer computer market, I'm interested in knowing how AMD is doing in the laptop sector and total overall processors sold in comparison with Intel. Most people I know wouldn't consider anything other than Centrino for some reason that I don't understand (marketing?) Furthermore, how will Apple's new MacBook and other Intel offerings affect AMD's apparent marketshare takeover?

Elephant in the room is Dell

[DrSbaitso (93553)]

AMD chips were found in 52.5 percent of desktop PCs sold in U.S. retail stores during that period."

Of course, Dell doesn't sell many of its computers in retail stores, it is the largest manufacturer in the US, and it doesn't use AMD chips (yet). So the quoted statistic is misleading at best. Still, more competition is always a good thing.

Re:Consumer vs Corporate?

[HangingChad (677530)]

Of course, it's always been my understanding that Intel is dominant in corporate computing...

If Intel is holding on to dominance in any market segment it's more likely to be the result of their business relationship with a company like Dell, which has been propping Intel up for the last two years while AMD ate away the rest of their market.

AMD makes a great product at a competitive price. What happened to Intel will happen to every other company that starts thinking they have a right to exist. Intel sometimes acts like they're a government agency.