Skip to main content

Here’s a shocking reminder of just how far ahead Intel is in race with AMD

Intel Core i5-14600K processor inside its socket.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

It’s no secret that between Intel and AMD, it’s Intel that holds the majority of the market — but a recent market analysis report really highlights just how much Intel beats both AMD and Apple. While both Intel and AMD make some of the best CPUs, and Apple has its own excellent proprietary silicon, Intel’s CPU shipments trump them both. The report tells us that Intel controls a whopping 78% of the PC processor market.

The information comes from Canalys, a PC industry research firm. It’s worth noting that it excludes tablets, which would have bumped up Apple’s numbers a bit, as well as Qualcomm’s. But zooming in on the PC CPU market alone, including desktops and laptops, tells a different story. The research shows a 78% market share for Intel and 13% for AMD, while Apple accounts for about 8% or slightly more. The rest belongs to MediaTek, Qualcomm, and ARM.

For Intel, shipments increased by 3% during 2023, while AMD saw a decline of 1%, and Apple fell by 4%. Canalys also notes that Intel’s overall PC shipment revenue went up by 2% year-over-year to $40 billion. Meanwhile, Apple’s revenue hit $8 billion in the final quarter of 2023, representing 8% year-on-year growth, and AMD saw 6% growth with $8 billion in revenue.

The market share between Intel, AMD, and Apple.
Canalys

The research firm also analyzed the global PC shipments and revenue on the basis of which PC vendor shipped the most computers in the past year. It turns out that Lenovo, Dell, and HP absolutely dominate that space, accounting for over 70% of all Intel CPU shipments. The split between Lenovo and HP was pretty even, at 25% and 23%, respectively, while Dell held 19% of the share.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!

For AMD, the split was a little different — Lenovo made 40% of all AMD-based computers, followed by HP with 23%, and Dell with a measly 3%. Asus was more prominent here, at 14%. These numbers aren’t exactly surprising. If you’re in the market for a laptop, chances are that it’ll be made by one of these four companies, although laptops with AMD chips are much harder to spot.

Intel’s had a few rough patches in 2023, with the company reporting its largest financial loss ever with a 133% drop in earnings per share and a 36% year-over-year drop in revenue. However, Canalys’ report shows that the company is still doing well despite the financial losses.

As always with these reports, it’s important to note that shipments don’t equal sales, but the fact that these companies are shipping such massive numbers of CPUs shows that we’re dealing with a healthy, growing PC market.

Editors' Recommendations

Monica J. White
Monica is a UK-based freelance writer and self-proclaimed geek. A firm believer in the "PC building is just like expensive…
AMD has a lot to prove this year
Dr. Lisa Su at the RX 7900 XT launch event.

AMD has clawed its way up from many disasters. Always chasing Nvidia and Intel, the so-called Team Red stayed strong over the years and found its niche in the PC market, a niche that has seemingly worked well, especially over the past few years.

Despite these valiant efforts, this past year has made me worry about the future of AMD, and the beginning of the year so far has only confirmed some of my worries.
Processing the past

Read more
A major era in Intel chip technology may be coming to an end
An Intel processor over a dark blue background.

Intel's next-generation Arrow Lake chips are said to be coming out later this year, but we don't know much about them just yet. However, a new leak shows us that two crucial features may be missing from the next-gen CPU lineup: hyperthreading and support for the AVX-512 extension. If Intel is ditching hyperthreading, it's not entirely unexpected, but it might make it trickier for even its best processors to beat AMD.

Hyperthreading allows physical cores in Intel processors to perform two tasks simultaneously, improving efficiency and performance in multi-threaded applications. Intel first introduced it in 2002, but it hasn't used the technology in every generation of its CPUs between then and now. The tech was all but gone from client processors for many years following its launch, although it was still present in certain models. Since then, Intel has selectively implemented HT across its product stack. In the last few years, it became a staple, especially in midrange and high-end chips.

Read more
Here’s how AMD counters Nvidia’s big RTX Super launch
RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT on a pink background.

Well done, AMD. Today is a big day for Nvidia -- after all, today is when the RTX 4070 Super hits the shelves. So what does AMD do? It serves up a huge price cut on one of its top graphics cards in this generation to strike back at Nvidia and counter its big release. Coincidence? No way. But will this price tag be low enough when Nvidia launches the RTX 4070 Ti Super?

AMD's RX 7900 XT is the GPU that's now a lot cheaper, with an official price of $750, but some models are as cheap as $710. It initially launched at $900 and was never the most popular option out of AMD's two flagships. The RX 7900 XTX, priced at just $100 more, often made more sense due to its greatly improved performance. As such, the RX 7900 XT was a bit of a forgotten entry in AMD's lineup. Its price quickly plummeted to $800 and even lower at certain retailers.

Read more