Marketing Insight
Once a fierce competitor to Intel in the CPU market, AMD had slipped into distant second place by the mid-2010s.
The early 2000s had been a golden era, but when Intel’s Core architecture launched in 2006, AMD struggled to match its performance and efficiency standards. By the early 2010s, AMD’s situation was awkward. Its latest FX processors failed to meet expectations, often losing ground even to older Intel chips. Market share in desktop and laptop CPUs had dwindled to single digits. For many, AMD had become synonymous with “budget only”, a brand used when cost mattered more than performance. For the wider public, AMD was unknown compared to Intel’s distinctive audio branding.
Financially, the company was in trouble. Layoffs, restructuring and a revolving door of leadership added to the issues.
Enter CEO Lisa Su, who was appointed in 2014. Su led the company’s refocus on its engineering efforts. Codenamed “Zen,” the new CPU architecture promised to be a complete reinvention designed with one aim in mind: compete with Intel on raw performance. By doing this, AMD hoped to regain market share and reverse its brand image of being “budget” rather than “excellent value”.