The large image: Reviews proceed to roll in, signaling that 2022 was a traditionally tough yr for {hardware} gross sales throughout the tech trade. All year long, PC processor gross sales noticed not one however two record-breaking quarterly slumps. And but, AMD managed to realize market share in each instances.
Mercury Analysis writes (by way of Tom’s {Hardware}) that the fourth quarter of 2022 noticed the largest fall in PC processor shipments in three many years. If studying that provides you a way of déjà vu, it is as a result of the identical factor occurred earlier in the identical yr.
The identical market analysis group reported that Q2 2022 desktop CPU gross sales suffered their greatest year-on-year decline since they began recording that information in 1994. Now, it appears This autumn 2022’s quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year drop broke that report. Furthermore, third-party information leads Mercury to conclude that 2022 represents the largest hunch in PC CPU historical past.
Excluding Arm processors, round 374 million CPUs had been shipped in 2022, 21 % lower than in 2021. 2022 CPU revenues noticed a 19 % drop to $65 billion. The first trigger is stock changes, which had a much bigger impression than declining gross sales. Which means that though shipments sharply fell, it did not essentially point out an equally stark slide in gross sales to finish customers.
Information: Mercury Analysis
One other vital element is that the decline affected x86 processors greater than others. Current studies point out that Arm processors are gaining market share within the laptop computer market, suggesting they have not suffered the identical blow x86 models did final yr.
Tech producers struggled to extend stock after the availability chain shocks beginning in 2020 coincided with swelling demand. This led to oversupply which, mixed with falling demand in 2022, spelled unhealthy financials for nearly all people.
Revenues from DRAM noticed their biggest international drop because the 2008 monetary disaster final yr. Desktop GPUs skilled their lowest gross sales since 2005. Firms like Nvidia and AMD slashed their orders from TSMC. Falling demand for smartphones resulted in 8-year quarterly lows from Samsung and Apple’s largest quarterly income hunch since 2016.
Like some analyses have reported for different sectors, Mercury expects the uneven waters for CPU shipments to proceed by way of the primary half of 2023 earlier than turning round in H2.
When Mercury reported the Q2 2022 numbers, they confirmed a market share acquire for AMD, which has been replicated in This autumn. From 2021 to 2022, Group Pink’s share of the x86 CPU market grew from 23 % to 30 %. Most of these features had been within the server CPU market, though Intel gained some market share in cellular processors.