Intel Corporation (INTC.US) and AMD (AMD.US) "Abandoning PCs to Focus on Servers": Refurbished old chips flow back into new computers, AI PCs being neglected.

Investment bank Susquehanna's latest research report pointed out that in 2026, there will be a significant increase in the proportion of old processors from Intel Corporation (INTC.US) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.US) in newly assembled personal computers. This is mainly because the two chip manufacturers tend to prioritize supplying the latest process chips to the higher profit server market, rather than the AI PC market. The report shows that in the second quarter of 2026, the market share of models with Intel Corporation AI PC processors remained stable overall. Among them, the Arrow Lake series on the Intel Corporation platform notebooks remained stable at around 10% (359 SKUs), while the Lunar Lake series increased slightly by 1 percentage point to around 9% (319 SKUs). It is worth noting that the market share of several previous generation platforms in Intel Corporation notebooks has actually increased - such as Tiger Lake increasing by 2 percentage points, Ice Lake increasing by 1 percentage point. At the same time, the market share of notebooks with Intel Corporation Intel 7 process processors decreased by 6 percentage points to around 48%. Susquehanna analyst Christopher Roland's team stated in Tuesday's report that this may indicate that Intel Corporation is prioritizing the allocation of more advanced process capacity to server CPUs - both Sapphire Rapids and Emerald Rapids use the Intel 7 process. A similar trend is also evident in AMD, with the appearance of old CPUs in new PC assemblies also increasing. Although the number of new PC assemblies in 2026 is higher than expected so far, Susquehanna still predicts that the annual shipments from original design manufacturers (ODMs) will decrease by 10% year-on-year, mainly due to significantly weaker demand expectations in the second half of the year. This assessment is consistent with predictions from multiple institutions. IDC predicts a 11.3% decrease in global PC shipments in 2026; Omdia predicts a 12% decrease; Morgan Stanley predicts a decrease of over 5%. The coldness in the PC market contrasts sharply with the heat in the server market.