Gearbest Tech
[Gearbest]Time flies, and the first half of 2023 is coming to an end.
Whether time is fast or slow, whether you and I have noticed it or not, in the first half of the year, countless industries have undergone profound changes. Moreover, compared with the past few years, this year's situation is even more special. Focusing on the Internet, technology and other fields, this change is particularly obvious and worth our careful review.
Overall, in the first half of 2023, various industries began to get rid of the impact of the epidemic in the past few years, and most industries have achieved recovery and returned to the track of growth. Of course, the road is tortuous. Even if the epidemic is no longer there, they will face new challenges. At the same time, the presence of Chinese companies in many industries has rapidly increased, and they have gradually begun to play a more important role.
Looking at it in detail, in the mobile phone industry, the long-term market slump has intensified the competition among manufacturers, and the just-concluded 618 promotion has pushed this competition to a climax; in the automobile industry, China continues to maintain its position as a leader in new energy, but the industry landscape is quietly changing; in the smart wearable industry, Apple, Huawei, and Xiaomi have been making a lot of moves, and the industry may usher in a new round of changes; the laptop industry experienced a “cold winter” in the first half of the year, but according to Lenovo's chairman's prediction, this may be the “last darkness before dawn”; in the computer installation industry, both old and new players are making their own calculations, and the good news is the rise of Chinese manufacturers.
In summary, Gearbest has launched a series of special topics called “Gearbest Mid-Year Observations” to review the development of various industries in the first half of 2023, focusing on the changes in industries such as technology and automobiles this year, and we will also look forward to their development trends in the second half of the year. This article focuses on “PC installation industry in the first half of 2023”.
In the past two or three years, the PC market has been in a state of chaos due to virtual currencies and other issues. Fortunately, these problems will become a thing of the past in 2023. In the previous six months, the installed computer market has undergone a new round of changes. For Chinese consumers, we are pleased to see that the presence of Chinese manufacturers is increasing rapidly.
CPU
According to data released by market research firm Mercury Research, in the first half of 2023, the CPU market for PCs (including desktops and notebooks) continued to be dominated by Intel. However, AMD's market share has begun to grow again after declining for three consecutive quarters in 2022. Specifically in the desktop CPU field, AMD's market share has increased to 19.2%, an increase of 0.9 percentage points compared to the first quarter of 2022, while Intel's market share is about 80%.
Compared with the peak in the second quarter of 2022, AMD is now showing a clear decline. Although it is back on the growth track, there are still many problems to be solved. Judging from consumer feedback, AMD's current market is too dependent on the old AM4 platform. The 7000 series AM5 processors have not been well received by consumers because of the high price of the bundled DDR5 memory sticks and motherboards. Even with a product like the 7800X 3D, which has a good reputation, it is still difficult to compete with Intel as a whole.
However, it is revealed that AM4's 5600X 3D will be released in the second half of the year. This processor will use a 6-core 12-thread Zen3 core, with 3MB of L2 cache and 96MB of L3 cache, and a default TDP of 105W. Moreover, this processor will support AMD 3D V-Cache technology. There is no doubt that this is another cost-effective gaming CPU. The launch of this processor will help extend the life of the AM4 platform in the second half of the year, and help AMD compete with Intel in the mid-range market.
The development of domestic processors is also very encouraging. At the end of May, Loongson 3A6000 had completed tape-out and passed preliminary testing. It is reported that the single-core performance of this processor is on par with Intel's 10th-generation Core and AMD Zen2 architecture CPU with 7nm process. Of course, there is still a big gap between this and the current products of Intel and AMD, but it can be said that “the future is promising.”
Discrete graphics
For a long time, the consumer discrete graphics card market was dominated by NVIDIA and AMD. Among them, NVIDIA has a very obvious advantage. However, this situation has changed greatly in the first half of 2023. In 2022, the veteran manufacturer Intel released three new discrete graphics cards: A380, A750 and A770. Although Intel's discrete graphics cards were not favored by the majority of consumers in the early days. But in fact, they have achieved very remarkable results.
According to the latest independent graphics card market data statistics report released by Jon Peddie Research (JPR), in the first quarter of 2023, the sales volume of desktop independent graphics cards continued to shrink, and the sales volume hit a new low of about 6.3 million units, falling to the lowest point in the past decades, a year-on-year decrease of 38.2%. Among them, NVIDIA continued to dominate with an 84% market share, selling about 5.29 million desktop independent graphics cards; AMD ranked second with a 12% market share, with shipments of about 760,000 units; Intel increased the supply of Ruixuan graphics cards in the first quarter of 2023, with shipments of about 250,000 units, gaining a 4% market share.
Although Intel still has a huge gap with the first two in terms of market share. But considering its accumulation in this regard, this is already a very gratifying achievement. At the same time, it is not difficult to see from the data that Intel graphics cards have not had a big impact on AMD graphics cards, and its share is mainly taken from Nvidia. At present, perhaps seeing the potential in fields such as artificial intelligence, Intel is obviously insisting on independent graphics cards and will not easily give up this business in a short period of time. Therefore, in the next period of time, as the driver improves, it may continue to put more pressure on Nvidia.
In terms of domestic graphics cards, domestic independent graphics card manufacturers such as Moore's Thread are also developing rapidly. In the first half of 2023, Moore's Thread MTT S80 went through several rounds of driver updates. Not long ago, Moore's Thread MTT S70 was officially released. The prices of these two products are roughly between 2,000 yuan and 3,000 yuan. In short, even domestic graphics cards have now begun to form their own product matrix.
SSD
A year and a half ago, many people would never have thought that the price of solid-state drives would reach its current level. Since the beginning of the year or even the end of last year, the price of solid-state drives has continued to fall. In the just-concluded 2023 618 promotion, the 1TB Fanxiang S500 Pro PCIe 3.0 solid-state drive sold on JD's self-operated platform using Yangtze Memory TLC particles was sold at a minimum price of only 229 yuan. On some other platforms, the price of a 1TB Yangtze TLC solid-state drive can be as low as 200 yuan. Behind today's “sky-high” prices is the dramatic changes in the solid-state drive market in the first half of 2023.
First of all, overall, there was an obvious oversupply in the SSD market in the first half of 2023, and the supply and demand relationship in the market was seriously unbalanced. As a result, the price of SSDs has “avalanche”. Among them, Yangtze Memory belongs to the snowflake that “braves the world”. With the general trend of falling market prices, Yangtze Memory has stepped up its efforts to fight price wars and seized a large number of low- and mid-end markets. At least in the domestic market, compared with the TLC particles of overseas companies such as Samsung and Micron, the TLC particles from Yangtze Memory have firmly grasped the entry-level market.
However, according to relevant data, the price of SSDs may have reached a low point. At the end of May, sources said that the prices of storage particles from brands such as Samsung, Micron and Hynix had stopped falling and began to rise slightly. At the same time, Yangtze Memory's particle quotation also began to rise at the end of May, with a price increase of about 3-5%. This round of price increases will first affect the enterprise market, and then be transmitted to the consumer market. Therefore, in the second half of 2023, there is a high probability that the price of SSDs will increase. Of course, this is actually a good thing. An overly fierce price war is not conducive to the survival of manufacturers. Reasonable price increases by storage chip manufacturers are more conducive to the healthy development of the market.
Final Thoughts
Although there are also problems such as the unsatisfactory prices of Nvidia and AMD graphics cards, overall, 2023 is undoubtedly a happy year for computer installers. Especially for Chinese consumers, the active performance of domestic manufacturers has injected great vitality into many industries. In the second half of the year, with the competition in the market, even independent graphics cards with prices lower than expected should see a significant decline in price. At least for now, the author has observed that the RTX4060 Ti graphics card has dropped in price during the 618 period. The future of the PC industry is still bright.
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