AMD continued to nibble away at Intel market share in the first quarter of 2026 with some bigger bites than usual, particularly on the server side, where it made considerable inroads year over year.
The Q1 2026 numbers from Mercury Research, a market research firm specializing in semiconductor sales, found that Intel’s overall share of the market fell from 72.9% in Q1 2025 to 67.4% one year later. There was a concurrent rise in share for AMD, rising from 27.1% to 32.6% in one year.
In the desktop CPU share excluding IoT, Intel went from 72% in Q1’25 to 66.8% in Q1’26, while AMD had a concurrent gain, from 28% in Q1’25 to 33.2% in Q1’26. Intel’s mobile CPU share fell from 77.5% in Q1’25 to 71.7% in Q1’26. AMD rose from 22.5% in Q1’25 to 28.3% in Q1’26.
That’s only half the story. x86 processor unit shipments were lower sequentially in the first quarter of 2026 vs. Q4’25, which is typical as the consumer market takes a breather after Christmas in the prior quarter. However, the magnitude of the decline was a bit worse than average, though not terribly so. This comes after a weaker than typical fourth quarter due to Intel’s supply constraints. So that’s two down quarters in a row.
Desktop processor shipments declined at worse than typical rates, and the segment was down nearly 20 percent from a year ago. Mobile client results were negligibly worse than seasonal averages, with on-year results down in the low single digits.
The server CPU market posted unit gains both sequentially and on-year, in stark contrast to all other segments, which were down sequentially and on-year. Units increased by more than 10% and AMD saw its greatest gains.
Intel’s server CPU share excluding IoT in Q1’26 was 66.8%, down six percentage points from 72.8% in Q1’25. AMD, therefore, rose six percentage points from 27.2% in Q1’25 to 33.2% in Q1’26.
Mercury notes that Arm estimates are difficult to ascertain, with PC clients being mostly M-Series MacBooks and a handful of Chromebooks. That said, Mercury estimates Arm-inclusive PC client share grew to 14.4%. Arm server CPU shipments are nearly double what they were a year ago, due primarily to growth from Nvidia’s Grace CPU.
