According to a recent report, AMD's processor sales are accelerating in Japan, reaching 68.6% of direct sales.
Though it's been known for some time now that AMD is making strides in some regions such as Germany, data from other regions has been slow to accumulate. Recently, data for both direct CPU sales (like ordering a CPU from Amazon) and pre-builts became available via BCN, a Japanese company that tracks market share trends in Japan.
The results are pretty telling: In Japan, AMD has 68.6% of direct CPU sales this July and 14.7% in pre-builts in June. The Ryzen 3000 processors seem to have further accelerated AMD's pace because its direct CPU sales made up only 46.7% last June.
This isn't incredibly surprising news: AMD is launching a full-scale assault against every one of Intel's desktop processor families, with the most intense competition currently coming on the desktop (for now).
AMD's sales aren't as pronounced when it comes to pre-built PCs, but considering they made up just 2% last January and are now up to 14.7%, the gains are impressive. It'll be interesting to see what the landscape will look like for pre-builts once the July data is available; if Ryzen 3000 has the same impact on pre-builts as it did to direct CPU sales, AMD might gain on Intel very quickly.
It's possible there could be a global trend towards AMD overtaking Intel in direct CPU sales, but big market shifts take time. It shouldn't be surprising that AMD is once again making inroads in these segments, but the speed at which it's happening in Japan is surprising given the sometimes slow rate of change in market share statistics. It's hard to say how Intel will respond, but we do know the -9900KS arrives later this year, but it is largely a -9900K with higher all-core turbo clocks, and it doesn't seem 10nm processors will come to the desktop soon.
