May notebook shipments increased by 15% month-over-month, driven by strong demand in both the consumer and commercial segments.
The rise exceeded Bank of America’s expectations, prompting its notebook analysts to revise their 2Q24 notebook forecast from a 5% quarter-over-quarter increase to 12%, which is above the normal seasonality of a 10% rise.
“We believe the better-than-expected May notebook sales are good news for both Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) and should result in upside to PC microprocessor sales during 2Q24 for these companies,” analysts said in a Thursday note.
Intel (INTC) generates approximately 37% of its revenue from notebook CPUs, while AMD (AMD) derives about 14% of its sales from notebook CPUs.
“While AMD’s and Intel’s PC sales were below seasonality in 1Q24, we would note that they were above seasonal for the previous three quarters,” the analysts added.
Despite both AMD and Intel being optimistic about an AI PC refresh cycle, Bank of America analysts believe this is “at least a year away” due to the current lack of "killer" applications.