AMD reaches 46% of server x86 CPU revenue — Intel still controls 70% of the consumer PC market share
AMD continues to grow stronger as Intel's positions slip.
The first quarter of 2026 was quite favorable for AMD as the company managed to increase its unit share on the market of client systems and skyrocketed its share in servers past 33%, according to Mercury Research. In addition, the company's revenue shares set records across client and server market segments, so AMD now controls 38.1% of all x86 CPU market value and 46.2% of all x86 server CPU revenue share. Perhaps an alarming sign is that the company's desktop PC unit and revenue shares declined sequentially, though they are up year-over-year (YoY).
Consumer CPUs: AMD gains ground, but only modestly
In the consumer PC segment, AMD continued to gain ground in the first quarter of 2026 as its client CPU unit share rose to 29.6%, up slightly from 29.2% in Q4 2025 and up sharply from 24.1% the same quarter a year ago, according to data by Mercury Research.
The quarter, however, showed a split between desktops and notebooks as Intel has managed to claw back 3.2% of the desktop PC market. Also, Intel remained the dominant supplier of client CPUs with a 70.4% share, though its position weakened from 75.9% in Q1 2025 as AMD did rather well in notebooks.
However, when it comes to the revenue side of things, AMD's position remained particularly strong. The company's client CPU revenue share reached 31.4%, slightly above the previous quarter and substantially higher than a year ago (26.6%), which perhaps reflects the company's continued strength in premium client processors. Nonetheless, Intel still controlled nearly 69% of client CPU revenue, which is a big deal. How things will unfold in the second half of the year — when Intel launches its Nova Lake processors for client systems that it pins a lot of hopes on — is something that remains to be seen.
Desktop CPUs: Market share comes, market share goes
In the desktop PC segment, AMD gave back a portion of the massive gains it made during the exceptionally strong holiday quarter, but still maintained a historically high position, so the decline can be considered as a correction, rather than a new trend.
AMD's desktop CPU unit share stood at 33.2% in Q1 2026, down from the record 36.4% in Q4 2025, but well above the 28% recorded in the quarter a year earlier. Intel regained some ground sequentially and increased its desktop share to 66.8%, but remained far below its year-ago level of 72% as AMD continued to hold a much stronger position than it did in recent years.
On the revenue side, AMD remained strong despite the sequential share drip: the company's desktop CPU revenue share was 37.6%, down from the record quarter before, but still notable 3.2% higher than a year earlier. Intel continued to generate most desktop CPU revenue overall, but AMD's ability to maintain a high revenue share relative to its unit share shows the continued strength of premium Ryzen CPUs.
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Mobile CPUs: Another record quarter
In the mobile PC segment, AMD delivered its strongest result ever as it managed to once again increase its share and set its highest share in laptops ever.
AMD's mobile CPU unit share climbed to 28.3% in Q1 2026, up from 26% in Q4 2025 and from 22.5% a year earlier, the best quarter ever for the company's mobile processors. For obvious reasons, Intel commanded the lion's share of the market — 71.7% — though its lead narrowed further as AMD increased its share by improving availability and expanding its footprint in segments (e.g., business and commercial notebooks) traditionally dominated by Intel.
As for revenue share, AMD's progress was even more impressive. The company’s mobile CPU revenue share rose to 28.9%, an increase from 24.9% in Q4 2025 and from 22.2% in Q1 2025, which reflects stronger sales of higher-value notebook processors. Intel continued to control the majority of notebook CPU revenue overall (71.7%, down from 77.5% in Q1 2025), but AMD's ability to approach 28.9% revenue share clearly indicates its increasing competitiveness in higher-margin premium laptops that historically favored Intel almost exclusively.
Server CPUs: Another breakthrough quarter
While the first quarter was good for AMD's mobile processors, it was exceptional for AMD's EPYC CPUs for servers. The company not only set a record in terms of unit share, but it has also managed to skyrocket its revenue share by 5% in a single quarter.
AMD's server processor unit share climbed to 33.2%, up from 28.8% in Q4 2025 and 27.2% a year earlier, the data by Mercury Research shows. Intel still shipped the majority of server processors with a 66.8% share, but its position weakened both sequentially and year-over-year as EPYC adoption continued to expand across hyperscale cloud providers, enterprise deployments, and AI/HPC infrastructure.
On the revenue side, AMD's performance was even more striking: the company's server CPU revenue share reached a record 46.2%, which means that AMD now commands nearly half of all x86 server CPU revenue while shipping roughly one-third of units. This gap between unit share and revenue share reflects significantly higher average selling prices of AMD's processors in general and the popularity of the company's high-core-count premium configurations. While Intel generated more server CPU revenue than AMD, ASPs of its Xeon products were lower compared to those of EPYCs, which is in line with market performance in prior quarters.
Summary
AMD started 2026 on a strong note: it expanded its share in both client and server CPUs and set new records for overall x86 CPU revenue share, according to Mercury Research.
The company posted particularly strong gains in notebooks and servers, where EPYC adoption pushed AMD’s server revenue share close to half of the entire x86 server market. While AMD's desktop CPU share declined sequentially after an exceptionally strong holiday quarter, it remained well above year-ago levels, so the strong momentum for the company continues.
In general, AMD continues to strengthen its positions in the most profitable parts of the x86 CPU market, while Intel retains shipment leadership but loses further ground in revenue share and premium segments.
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Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.
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usertests Is "consumer" PC market share counting corporate/office desktops?Reply
That's where Intel shines. In PCs that get dumped onto the used market for cheap. -
DS426 Reply
I think it is in this context, though I'd love to see x86 business desktop and laptop/mobile broken out from true consumer products. I'm still assuming that AMD is making slower progress in the business world as the old stuffies just stick with Intel "because why not?"usertests said:Is "consumer" PC market share counting corporate/office desktops?
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TechieTwo It's all good for customers that they can purchase the best CPUs for less than Intel's pricing.Reply -
hotaru251 and server is where both truly care about as thats where the actual profit is. Fact intel managed to have an effective monopoly on server and dropped ball so hard should be enoguh to never let them sit idle again.Reply -
usertests Reply
Intel's offerings aren't even bad. If you compare a Core Ultra 5 245 (65W) to a Ryzen 7 Pro 9745, the CPU performance should be about the same. The Arrow Lake CPUs also have a faster iGPU, which is what most office PCs will use.DS426 said:I think it is in this context, though I'd love to see x86 business desktop and laptop/mobile broken out from true consumer products. I'm still assuming that AMD is making slower progress in the business world as the old stuffies just stick with Intel "because why not?"
Intel's main failings are not having an answer to X3D, which is relevant to gamers but not most office PCs, and the lack of AVX-512 support in mainstream CPUs, which is also niche but holding everyone back. Both of these could be fixed by Nova Lake. They just need to avoid any future degradation incidents. -
ekio Can’t wait to see arm laptops becoming the too obvious efficiency choice and see x86 sells collapsing.Reply
Maybe the MacBook neo will teach the world that they can get good hardware leaving this old crap. -
usertests Reply
ARM's purported efficiency benefits are always overrated by proponents, and AMD and Intel aren't sitting still on efficiency. They'll probably put "LP" core clusters in every desktop and laptop CPU within the next few years.ekio said:Can’t wait to see arm laptops becoming the too obvious efficiency choice and see x86 sells collapsing.
Maybe the MacBook neo will teach the world that they can get good hardware leaving this old crap.
You can wait, because it's not happening soon. Qualcomm and Microsoft dropped the ball yet again, and Nvidia's attempt has been massively delayed. -
ekio Reply
I have a macbook that beats my gaming pc desktop mid tower while never running hot ever.usertests said:ARM's purported efficiency benefits are always overrated by proponents, and AMD and Intel aren't sitting still on efficiency. They'll probably put "LP" core clusters in every desktop and laptop CPU within the next few years.
You can wait, because it's not happening soon. Qualcomm and Microsoft dropped the ball yet again, and Nvidia's attempt has been massively delayed.
RISC type cpus are hugely superior to these x86 burning craps. Enough with the imposters. 50 years they scam the world with this obsolete proprietary duopoly locked tech.
Gaming pcs could be twice smaller yet faster and drop all the cooling equipment if these x86 merchant crooks would go away. -
bit_user Reply
I think this is more of a story about Qualcomm/Nuvia's efficiency being over-hyped. As @eiko said, Apple seems to have a genuine lead on efficiency that I think nobody can match. The ARM ISA is only part of their winning formula.usertests said:ARM's purported efficiency benefits are always overrated by proponents,
They can do "good enough" on efficiency that they don't lose significant market share to Apple, Qualcomm, or MediaTek on that basis alone.usertests said:AMD and Intel aren't sitting still on efficiency.