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by theclaw 2509 days ago
... Says a single German PC enthusiast retailer. Hardly representative. They could have just run a big Ryzen ad campaign or something. The clickbait headline suggests this is based on official numbers.
4 comments

While the headline is a bit clickbaity, for the retail CPU market, I don't think it's actually that unrepresentative.

Here's reports from Japan of AMD overtaking Intel in retail CPU market share in July for the first time ever. The month-to-month trend is actually pretty impressive even before the Zen2 launch: https://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/1197213.html and https://www.bcnretail.com/market/detail/20190703_126041.html

AMD also overtook Intel for the first time ever in Korea: http://dpg.danawa.com/news/view?boardSeq=293&listSeq=3960065...

It looks like AMD is also scoring OEM wins on desktop and server (still weak on laptops where Intel seems like they're putting in a good fight and where AMD's staggered releases about 6-9mo behind).

>still weak on laptops where Intel seems like they're putting in a good fight

Compared to just a year ago, AMD are absolutely killing it in the laptop market. The old A-series APUs were strictly relegated to very low cost machines, first-gen Ryzen struggled to gain traction, but most major manufacturers are now offering Ryzen-based laptops across the midrange. AMD are a long way from dominance, but they've become a legitimate competitor in a remarkably short space of time; for the first time ever, I expect my next laptop to be AMD-based.

Mine is. AMD Ryzen 3 3200U in Acer Aspire ~$300. Like it a lot. First non Intel in a laptop for me.
Also, sales were already skewed towards AMD processors.

Article says marketshare at that retailer for AMD was 68% in June, before the new processors launched on 7/7. In July it went up to 79%, which isn't that impressive considering pent up demand caused an increase of +11%.

Aren't "PC enthusiasts" the whole customer base for those CPUs? Majority of people that need a computer buy laptops, and gamers buy consoles.
Companies building and selling pre-built computers are probably the main customer base. This specific one is probably a bit too expensive to end up in your average office machine, but I could see companies with higher requirements (like CAD etc.) use it.
> .. and gamers buy consoles.

Disagree, many if not most gamers build their PCs. On my forum, in every new build thread, all advise Ryzen, no one advises Intel.

Just be aware that echo chambers are nasty business. They can make you think things are globally true when only a small minority acts that way
Roger. I usually do my own research when I buy stuff.
Sorry, I wasn't clear — it's not about what the right purchase is, it's about the perception that AMD is doing phenomenally in the marketplace.

The enthusiast market is clearly in a place where it favours AMD (I'm personally likely getting myself a new build based on their CPUs in the coming months), but this isn't necessarily representative of the CPU market as a whole.

Intel follows IBM and Microsoft as the latest selection that one probably can't get fired for picking. But your point is valid. Despite the Ryzen 5 3600X sitting under my desk for this weekend's new build, for $NEW_JOB I picked out a Xeon laptop because it's a safer choice for a new job and Dell will be there next year if it needs fixing.
Many, if not most PC gaming enthusiasts build their PCs.

Most gamers would never even consider such an endeavor.

Wall Street probably has better numbers, AMD just tanked on earnings and sales: https://yhoo.it/2OC9q7y
Earnings call numbers were about Q2 with desktop CPU and GPU sales down due to long hyped new CPUs and GPUs launching on June 7th. PS4 and Xbox One are also long in the tooth now - semi-custom SoCs are down too.

The article here is about sales after the June 7th launch which went really well.

The launch was July 7th.

Also, big Wall Street traders are known to go to extremes to find sales figures, like using photos from spy satellites of Walmart parking lots to estimate sales before earnings dates. If AMD's sales were truly spectacular, they would be loading up AMD stock by the bucketload right now.

Other times, they don't know the first thing about what companies actually do. The success of Ryzen looked quite probable even before release, yet the stock price didn't move much. I bought some.
Haha that do you have any articles talking about that satellite thing? I feel like the finance industry has a lot of similarities with the security industry in terms of unconventional techniques used.