Intel x86 share drops below 70% as AMD reaches record

Intel’s x86 CPU market share fell below 70% for the first time since 1995, reaching 69.3% in Q2 2026, according to Mercury Research. AMD rose to 30.7%, a new company record, while Mercury Research president Dean McCarron confirmed the 31-year low to CRN after the release of the second-quarter CPU market share report.

The figures cover PC and server CPU shipments. When semi-custom, embedded and IoT products are included, Intel’s share drops to 65.9% vs. AMD’s 34.1%, helped by stronger than expected gaming console SoC shipments in a segment where Intel largely does not compete.

AMD’s gains extended across major segments. Desktop share reached 34.9%, up 2.7 points year over year, against Intel’s 65.1%. In servers, AMD grew by 7.3 points year over year to 34.5%, while Intel held 65.5%. AMD has launched 6th Gen EPYC ‘Venice’ processors based on the ‘Zen 6’ CPU microarchitecture, while Intel has announced Xeon 7 ‘Diamond Rapids’ CPUs and the ‘Crescent Island’ graphics card for data centers and workstations. AMD’s laptop share climbed to 28.9%, up 8.4 points year over year, while Intel remained at 71.1%. Overall PC share for AMD reached a record 30.3%, up 6.4 points year over year.