For almost two years we have been escalating prices where they have reached an absurd point. Although the NAND Flash are falling in price being the only ones to be saved, the market for graphics cards and now that of CPUs are out of control, but luckily everything that has a beginning has an end. This end will take place already within this 2022 according to IDC and with this will come the price adjustments given the war between Intel, AMD, Apple and now Qualcomm.
After the increase in demand and prices, a sudden cooling of the market is expected based on a stagnation of the sector and a gradual increase in production, which, added to the new competition in markets such as those described for CPU and GPU, results in a more than possible price drop in order to compete. But, if the market is dominated, why are they going to reduce, being this an oligopoly?
Intel and AMD are no longer alone: ​​ARM on the prowl
Although the market for x86 CPUs is still booming and nothing suggests that it could lose its strength, it is also true that ARM will tread very hard in 2022. We must take into account not only the space occupied by the two giants, but all the gaps of the market that must be covered and that are becoming more and more. Although those of Lisa Su and Pat Gelsinger have their own space and according to the IDC firm the market and its shipments will grow by almost 12% in 2022, the reality is that this figure will be reduced if we take into account that in 2021 the sector grew 13%.
That is to say, shipments are reduced and with this the income will stagnate or even fall, which suggests a natural adjustment that should take place little by little in all companies. But the factor of new competition lurks and the data for the two giants does not look very successful for next year.
Apple and Qualcomm are real competition
Although it may seem that they compete in different sectors, this is not really the case. This is because x86 and ARM are not comparatively speaking "rivals", so companies are including their settings in a higher layer such as "mobility". Here what is tried is to reach the largest number of users by selling laptops or mobile devices and here the APUs and CPUs fight with the SoC M1 and Snapdragon from you to you.
Intel has responded to the M1 with Alder Lake, AMD has nothing in the energy efficiency section, Qualcomm with its Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 will hit like Apple, since many products are certified today for Windows 11 platforms, so the market It promises to be hectic and unpleasant for the big two.
In fact, there are already analysts claiming that the red and blue teams have to respond firmly to these new threats and at the same time compete on their own at the high end. Here AMD possibly has the upper hand with Zen 4 , but Intel has moved much better targeting all sectors with offers more than interesting and above all efficient as such.
What about Samsung and its Exynos? Well, they look really bad, a leak came out yesterday and was withdrawn because a major leaker called the new SoC with RDNA 2 under its belt insufficient and disappointing , so it seems that the Koreans will not be very high this year.
Ultimately, the fight will be 4 this year, shipments fall, prices will adjust and there will be cuts, production will rise and the sector will finally stabilize. Are good times coming to the PC? The price war between Intel, AMD, Apple and Qualcomm is on the horizon, we will see in 11 months how far it goes.