When the third quarter of 2024 ended, Intel had lost a substantial 5.7% PC market share to its rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). This was the largest market share gain for AMD in the last 10 years and underscored Intel’s basic problem: Its rival has been chipping away at its market share as the company struggles to innovate.
Despite the above, Intel still enjoys a 71.3% market share! The problem, however, is that the market is shrinking. Data centers continue to shift from CPUs to GPUs, and Intel hardly has a GPU market share. So it continues to do what it can to salvage the CPU market.
At the CES 2025, the company launched its Core Ultra 200HX series for gaming laptops. These are meant to help gamers enjoy an immersive experience thanks to AI acceleration. AI acceleration helps reduce power consumption and latency, improving speed and resulting in a much better gaming experience.
According to the chipmaker, the Intel Core Ultra 200HX will be the first AI CPU with a built-in Neural Processing Unit (NPU). The NPU is what helps perform the computations required for AI tasks. In 2025, we can expect the company to build on this launch, as it attempts to secure its market dominance in the AI PC segment. The launch of the CPU was also accompanied by the H series mobile processors, which offer similar improvements and efficiencies.
Intel continues to lose revenue and these processors are an attempt at rescuing the trend of customers leaving the company. The PC market domination is currently supported by big corporations that have embedded Intel in their infrastructure. The switching cost for them can often be high, which is why they continue to use Intel even if AMD beats the company’s CPUs on certain benchmarks. If one day the big clients decide to move on, Intel would find it impossible to recover. Last month’s resignation of CEO Pat Gelisnger shows that the plan to regain the company’s old aura wasn’t working. Gelsinger was at the helm of affairs for three years, a period the board thought was enough to start seeing results. Intel rivals Nvidia and Taiwan Semiconductor are closing in on all-time highs, so the sad state of affairs for Intel continues and investors may want to wait more to see if the new product launches are really any different from the previous ones in terms of bringing in more revenue.
Intel is not on our latest list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 68 hedge fund portfolios held INTC at the end of the third quarter which was 75 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of INTC as a leading AI investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is as promising as INTC but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.