AMD surpasses Intel in desktop CPU market share

For the first time since 2006, AMD has finally overtaken Intel by capturing more desktop CPU market share. AMD started this trend back in 2017 thanks to the popularity of its Ryzen series of processors. It marked the company’s entry into the high-end PC market.

The credit goes to  Dr. Lisa Su, who took over as new CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and changed company’s direction towards core competencies of CPU and GPUs. Back in Q1 2006, AMD came close to beating Intel with 53.9% market share. However, Intel quickly surpassed AMD and never looked back for almost 15 year, coming very close to achieving 80% desktop CPU market share in Q4 2016.

Thanks to the Ryzen series, AMD went from 23.4% market share back in Q1 2017 to 43.2% market share in 2019. Now in Feb 2021, according to PassMark, AMD has 50.8% desktop CPU market share, finally surpassing Intel (49.2%). AMD is showing no signs of slowing down thanks to the latest next-gen Zen 3 architecture of Ryzen 7 5800X and Ryzen 9 5950X, “the world’s best gaming CPU” according to AMD.

AMD is also closing the gap in the overall CPU market share (including desktops and laptops) with 39.8% market share compared to Intel with 60.2% market share as of Feb2021. The AMD Zen 3 architecture is a huge step forward from Zen 2 and Ryzen 3000 series and Intel doesn’t really have anything to compete with the Ryzen 9 5950X. There is no reason to believe that AMD will slowdown its trajectory given the advancements in the Ryzen CPU technology and growing popularity in the PC world.

Source: PassMark