Both Intel and AMD have said they expect more money for Christmas than expected.
While that’s certainly better than getting less money; the rate of increase is more like a lump of coal than a bunch of candy canes.
Intel’s numbers imply about a 5% increase in CPUs sold over last quarter.
Some third-party AMD sales projections I’ve seen imply about the same.
Now before you jump at that last statement, AMD stated, quite correctly, that their market share didn’t drop much in the second and third quarter even though their production did. That meant they weren’t selling a whole lot of new processors, but selling a bunch of old processors.
This Christmas quarter, AMD is selling a lot more new processors and fewer old processors. That’s certainly a lot better for AMD, but that doesn’t mean they’re selling a lot more total processors.
Historically, the Christmas quarter is by far the best selling quarter for CPUs, and the jump from the third to fourth quarter is usually more like 20%.
It should also be noted that this 5% increase is coming from some extremely aggressive pricing by the OEMs.
So it’s better than nothing, but it’s no reason to party like it were 1999 in the CPU industry.
Be the first to comment