Sales report: Intel prioritising high-end CPUs, haemorrhages market share to AMD in Japan

The tech world is currently alight with Radeon RX 5700 and Ryzen Zen 2 reviews, but AMD has already stolen an advance over Intel with a huge swing in CPU sales market share in Japan since October. Intel has dominated the market until recently, with it enjoying over a 70% share at the end of October last year. However, AMD has been making steady week-on-week gains since then from a low of 27.9% at the start of October to a high of 50.5% by the end of June.

The graph below paints a bleak picture for Intel, with its CPU sales market share having dropped by 21.6% in Japan since October. The data has been compiled by Japanese website BCN Retail, which determines market share by collating point of sale (POS) data from major retailers in Japan. In short, AMD is now outselling Intel on its core product offering.

Intel is confident of its position in the market though, having invested in its operations to scale the production of its flagship processors in Q3 and Q4 2019. It also attributes the recent success of AMD to it offering more affordable chipsets, which Intel is working to counter by the end of Q4. So, it seems as though Intel expects its market share to pick up again in 2020, although it remains to be seen how successful AMD's new Zen 2 CPUs will be.