The penetration of AMD processors in notebooks has been rising since the second half of 2018 due to the ongoing tight supply of Intel's chips, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.
The sources noted because of the supply priority, the top-4 vendors Hewlett-Packard (HP), Lenovo, Dell and Apple have experienced much smaller influences from the shortages, while impact on non-top-4 players such as Acer and Asustek Computer have been much bigger. As a result, the two Taiwan-based vendors' adoption of AMD-based solutions for their devices is much higher than that of the top-4, the sources said.
At the preshow for CES 2019, Acer has unveiled the Chromebook 315, its first Chromebook product equipped with AMD's A6-9220C or A4-9120C processor and Radeon graphics card. It comes with a 15.6-inch display.
In the past few years, AMD processors' penetration in notebook shipments had been around 10-15% but the percentage now has been rising with shipments also growing rapidly. However, despite the growths, AMD CPUs' proportion is still expected to have difficulty surpassing 20%, the sources suggested.
The sources pointed out that Intel's CPU shortages are unlikely to improve until the second quarter of 2019, but vendors are now coming under less pressure, as the first half of 2019 is the traditional slow season.
Acer has also announced two new Predator gaming notebooks: the Predator Triton 900 with a 17-inch display and the Ezel Aero Hinge design; and the Predator Triton 500 with a 15-inch display and an ultra-thin form factor.
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