Intel vs AMD Processor Share, Segment by Segment

Intel still sells most x86 processors, but AMD now takes a much larger share of the money

The most recent full set of Mercury Research segment shares that can be confirmed at a primary source covers the fourth quarter of 2025. In that quarter AMD earned 41.3 percent of x86 server processor revenue, 42.6 percent of desktop processor revenue, 24.9 percent of notebook processor revenue and 31.2 percent of client revenue, which combines desktops and notebooks. Across all x86 processors AMD took 35.4 percent of revenue, so Intel and the small remaining x86 suppliers held 64.6 percent. AMD then told investors that its server value share reached 46 percent in the first quarter of 2026.

Unit share tells a different story, because Intel sells many more low priced chips. In the second quarter of 2025, the latest quarter for which AMD published both measures for servers, AMD shipped 27.3 percent of x86 server processors but earned 41.0 percent of server processor revenue. The company accounts confirm the shift: in the third quarter of 2026 the AMD Data Center segment had revenue of 8.55 billion dollars against 7.32 billion dollars for Intel Data Center and AI, while Intel still sold 8.10 billion dollars of client products against 2.95 billion dollars for the AMD Client segment.

Unit share, revenue share and why this page uses so few of the numbers in circulation

Almost every published figure on Intel against AMD comes from one firm, Mercury Research, an independent analyst firm that has tracked x86 processor shipments for decades. Mercury estimates how many processors each company sells into the supply chain in each quarter, which it calls sell-in, and at what price. From that it calculates two kinds of share for each segment: unit share, which counts every chip equally, and revenue share, which weights each chip by its selling price. Mercury sells the detailed data to subscribers and releases headline figures each quarter.

The segments matter as much as the measure. Mercury reports desktop, notebook (which it calls mobile) and server processors separately, a client figure that combines desktop and notebook, and an overall x86 total. A headline such as AMD at 30 percent can mean any of these, by units or by revenue, and Mercury also revises past quarters when new information arrives. That is why figures for the same quarter often differ by a point or more between articles.

This approach leaves gaps. Mercury released unit shares for 2026 quarters, but we could not confirm them in its own release or in a statement from Intel or AMD, so they are not shown here. The result is a smaller set of numbers that can each be traced to the company or the research firm that produced them. For the wider PC market that these chips go into, see our record of global PC shipments since 2009.

Q4 2025: AMD gained revenue share in every segment within a year

The Mercury report for the fourth quarter of 2025, released in February 2026, gives the clearest single picture of the market by segment. AMD revenue share rose in every category compared with a year earlier. The largest move was in desktops, up 14.6 percentage points to 42.6 percent. Client revenue share, the figure closest to overall PC position, rose 7.4 points to 31.2 percent. Server revenue share rose 4.9 points to a then record 41.3 percent, and the overall x86 figure rose 6.8 points to 35.4 percent.

Desktops moved most: AMD revenue share in desktop processors rose from 28.0 to 42.6 percent in a year, far more than in any other segment.

Changes are percentage points as reported by Mercury Research. The last column is 100 percent minus the AMD share, a BusinessStats calculation; it is almost entirely Intel, with small volumes from other x86 licensees.

Two features of the table stand out. First, the order of the segments is the reverse of what unit shipments suggest: AMD earns its highest share of revenue in desktops and servers, where buyers pay for performance, and its lowest in notebooks, where large PC makers choose the processor for whole product lines. Second, the gains were not spread evenly through the year. Most of the notebook gain came in a single quarter, with the share up 3.3 points from Q3 2025, while the desktop gain had largely happened by the third quarter.

Roughly one dollar in three: AMD earned 35.4 percent of all x86 processor revenue in Q4 2025, up from an implied 28.6 percent a year earlier.

These are revenue figures, which run ahead of unit share for AMD because its average selling price is higher in most segments. The Q4 2025 release did not include the matching unit shares, so this page does not quote them. The next sections take each segment in turn and set the share data against what the two companies actually reported.

Desktop processors: where AMD earns the most per chip

Desktops are the one large segment in which many buyers choose the processor themselves, either by building their own PC or by picking a gaming system for its chip. It is also where AMD revenue share has risen fastest. Mercury put AMD at 42.6 percent of desktop processor revenue in Q4 2025, up 1.6 points from the third quarter and 14.6 points from Q4 2024. On the implied figures, AMD desktop revenue share therefore rose by more than half in a single year.

AMD gave its own reading of the same market at its Financial Analyst Day in November 2025, when it told investors it had more than 50 percent of desktop CPU channel share. Channel share covers processors sold separately through distributors and retailers, mostly to people who build or upgrade their own PCs, and AMD did not give a period or a source for the figure. It is a narrower measure than the Mercury desktop total, which also counts processors that PC makers buy for ready built desktops, so the gap between the two figures implies that Intel is stronger in ready built desktops than at retail.

Desktop processors are a smaller part of the market than notebooks, so a large desktop share moves the client total less than it might appear. That is visible in the Q4 2025 data: a 42.6 percent desktop revenue share and a 24.9 percent notebook share combined into a client share of 31.2 percent, much closer to the notebook figure.

Notebook processors: still about three quarters Intel

Laptops are the largest part of the PC processor market and the segment where Intel is most secure. Notebook designs are fixed by PC makers a year or more before they ship, corporate fleets are bought through long contracts, and Intel has close engineering ties with the major brands. In Q4 2025 Mercury put AMD at 24.9 percent of notebook processor revenue, which left Intel and others with 75.1 percent.

The notebook number moved later than the desktop one. AMD notebook revenue share was flat between the implied Q4 2024 figure of 21.6 percent and the third quarter of 2025, then rose 3.3 points in the final quarter of the year. AMD also told investors in November 2025 that it had reached a record client share of 28 percent, without naming the quarter or saying whether that was a unit or revenue measure. Because client share is dominated by notebooks, the notebook segment decides whether AMD can reach the client revenue share of more than 40 percent that it has set as a target for the next three to five years.

Notebooks are also where x86 faces the most competition from outside the duopoly. Apple has used its own Arm based processors in every Mac since 2023, and Windows laptops with Qualcomm Snapdragon X chips went on sale in 2024. None of these appear in x86 share figures. Apple volumes are tracked in our data on Mac sales since 2006, and the licensing business behind Arm processors in our report on Arm Holdings.

Server processors: 27 percent of units, 41 percent of revenue

Servers show the gap between unit share and revenue share most clearly. In a footnote to its November 2025 Financial Analyst Day presentation, AMD cited Mercury Research sell-in estimates for the second quarter of 2025: a revenue share of 41.0 percent and a unit share of 27.3 percent. In other words, AMD shipped a little over one in four x86 server processors but earned more than two in five of the dollars spent on them.

A 13.7 point premium: AMD earned 41.0 percent of server processor revenue in Q2 2025 with 27.3 percent of the units.

Three things produce the premium. AMD EPYC processors are concentrated in large cloud and AI servers with high core counts and high prices. Intel sells many more entry level and single socket Xeon chips, which add units but little revenue. And Mercury counts every x86 server chip, including small edge and storage models where Intel volumes are large. The premium also explains why the AMD Data Center segment can outsell Intel Data Center and AI in money terms while Intel still ships the majority of server processors.

The revenue share kept rising after mid 2025. The Mercury Q4 2025 report put it at 41.3 percent, up 1.8 points from the third quarter, which implies 39.5 percent in Q3 2025, and Lisa Su, the AMD chief executive, told the 2026 annual meeting of stockholders that AMD exited 2025 with record server CPU revenue share of more than 40 percent. At a Bank of America conference on 2 June 2026, Jean Hu, the AMD chief financial officer, said the company had reached 46 percent of server value share in the first quarter of 2026.

From 36 to 46 percent: AMD server revenue share rose by about ten points in the five quarters to Q1 2026, with the biggest step at the start of 2026.

AMD has set itself a target of more than 50 percent server revenue share within three to five years, measured from a 2025 baseline, which Lisa Su repeated on the first quarter 2026 earnings call as an opportunity to grow to more than half of the market. The demand behind this, from cloud and AI build outs, is covered in our data center statistics and in our view of the three largest cloud providers.

What the filings show: client and data center revenue by quarter

Company accounts give a cross check that does not depend on any estimate, with one important caveat: the reporting segments are not pure processor businesses. The Intel Client Computing Group, renamed Client Computing and Physical AI Group in 2026, also includes chipsets, connectivity and other PC components. Intel Data Center and AI covers Xeon processors and related products. The AMD Data Center segment includes Instinct GPU accelerators as well as EPYC processors, and AMD Client covers Ryzen PC processors, while its Gaming segment is mainly console chips and Radeon graphics cards.

A gap of about 5 billion dollars a quarter: Intel client revenue was 8.10 billion dollars in Q3 2026, down 5 percent, while AMD Client grew 7 percent to 2.95 billion dollars.

On the client side the money gap is still large. Over the first nine months of 2026 Intel reported 24.70 billion dollars of client revenue against 8.90 billion dollars for the AMD Client segment. In the third quarter Intel client revenue fell 5 percent from a year earlier to 8.10 billion dollars, and AMD Client rose 7 percent to 2.95 billion dollars, a much slower pace than the 51 percent growth of AMD Client in 2025. AMD Gaming fell 40 percent to 773 million dollars.

AMD pulled ahead in Q3 2025: AMD Data Center revenue has exceeded Intel DCAI every quarter since, reaching 8.55 billion dollars against 7.32 billion dollars in Q3 2026.

Data center revenue is growing quickly at both companies. Intel DCAI rose 78 percent from a year earlier in Q3 2026 to 7.32 billion dollars its fastest growth in the seven quarters shown. AMD Data Center grew 97 percent to 8.55 billion dollars. Because the AMD figure includes GPU accelerators, the faster growth does not by itself prove faster processor share gains, but the Mercury revenue shares point the same way.

Share columns are BusinessStats calculations: AMD segment revenue divided by the sum of the matching Intel and AMD segments. They are not market shares, because the segments include products other than x86 processors. AMD Q2 2025 values are derived from nine month totals.

Client stuck near a quarter: AMD has had between 23.1 and 27.4 percent of the combined client revenue of the two companies since early 2025, while its data center line crossed 50 percent in Q3 2025.

The annual figures give the same picture over a longer span. Intel reported client revenue of 32.23 billion dollars in 2025, down 3 percent, and DCAI revenue of 16.92 billion dollars, up 5 percent. AMD reported record Client revenue of 10.64 billion dollars, up 51 percent, and Data Center revenue of 16.64 billion dollars, up 32 percent. On these totals the AMD share of the combined client revenue of the two companies rose from 17.5 percent in 2024 to 24.8 percent in 2025. How these chip businesses compare with the largest technology groups is covered in our big tech revenue comparison and in the breakdown of the largest revenue sources of leading tech companies.

Changes are BusinessStats calculations from the reported million dollar figures. Intel 2025 totals include Altera until its deconsolidation on 12 September 2025, in the All Other segment.

Operating income: Intel data center now earns more than its client business

Revenue share decides who sells more; operating income shows who keeps more. In Q3 2026 Intel DCAI reported operating income of 3.04 billion dollars, a margin of 41.5 percent, up from 964 million dollars a year earlier. Intel client operating income fell to 2.29 billion dollars from 2.69 billion dollars. AMD Data Center earned 2.88 billion dollars, a margin of 33.7 percent, while the combined AMD Client and Gaming segments earned 573 million dollars on 3.72 billion dollars of revenue.

The money is in data centers: both data center segments earned more than 2.8 billion dollars in Q3 2026, against 573 million dollars for AMD Client and Gaming.

For the whole of 2025 the order was different. Intel client operating income was 9.32 billion dollars, down from 11.59 billion dollars in 2024, and DCAI earned 3.42 billion dollars. AMD Data Center earned 3.60 billion dollars and Client and Gaming 2.86 billion dollars. Intel Foundry, which makes chips for Intel and outside customers, remains loss making, with an operating loss of 1.85 billion dollars in Q3 2026 against 2.32 billion dollars a year earlier.

The AI accelerator market that lifts AMD Data Center, and where Nvidia leads, is analysed in our Nvidia statistics and facts and in our worldwide AI statistics.

Guidance for Q4 2026 and the share targets AMD has set

Both companies gave revenue guidance for the fourth quarter of 2026. Intel guided to revenue of 15.0 to 16.0 billion dollars, below the 16.51 billion dollars of Q3 2026. AMD guided to about 17 billion dollars, plus or minus 3 percent, which at the midpoint would be growth of about 66 percent from a year earlier and 27 percent from the third quarter. Neither company gives guidance by segment share.

Targets are forward looking statements by AMD, not measured shares. Intel has not published comparable share targets.

The targets show where AMD expects the hardest work to be. Reaching half of server revenue would need about four more points from the Q1 2026 level. Reaching 40 percent of client revenue would need almost nine points from the Q4 2025 level, most of it in notebooks, where Intel has held about three quarters of revenue. Market values of the two companies, which reflect these expectations, are tracked in our ranking of the top companies by market capitalization.

Arm processors sit outside the x86 split

Every share on this page is a share of x86 processors only. Apple Mac computers, Windows laptops with Qualcomm Snapdragon chips, Arm Chromebooks and Arm server processors such as AWS Graviton and Nvidia Grace are not part of the Intel and AMD split. Mercury Research publishes estimates for Arm based PC processors as well, but we could not confirm a current figure in its own release or in a statement from a chip company, so no Arm share is shown here.

What the company data do show is that x86 remains the larger business by a wide margin. Intel and AMD together reported client segment revenue of 11.05 billion dollars in Q3 2026. The Arm licensing model, in which Arm earns royalties on chips designed by others, is described in our pages on Arm Holdings and Arm net sales worldwide, and smartphone processors, where Arm designs dominate, connect to our smartphone market share by vendor.

Methodology and data notes

Market share figures come from Mercury Research. They are used only where they appear in the Mercury Q4 2025 report as released through a vendor press release on 13 February 2026, or where AMD quotes them: in footnote EPYC-055A of its Financial Analyst Day presentation of 11 November 2025 (Q2 2025 server shares), in remarks by Lisa Su at the 2026 annual meeting of stockholders, and in remarks by Jean Hu on 2 June 2026. Mercury figures are sell-in estimates of shipments into the supply chain, not sales to end users, and Mercury revises earlier quarters.

Company figures come from the Intel and AMD quarterly earnings releases filed with the SEC. Each release contains the current quarter and the year ago quarter; the Q3 2026 AMD release also contains nine month totals, from which the AMD Q2 2025 segment figures are derived. Where a quarter appears in more than one release, the value shown is the one in the most recent release. Point changes, implied prior quarter shares, margins, growth rates and the AMD share of combined segment revenue are BusinessStats calculations.

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