AMD has been clawing back discrete GPU market share from rival Nvidia over recent months. Late last year we saw the red team pushing back slightly against the dominance of the green team, via figures from Jon Peddie Research. This week Mercury Research published its GPU market figures from Q1 2016, which show that AMD is keeping the upwards momentum on its side. Unfortunately, for all GPU makers, the big picture is that the whole market is down over 10 per cent in this most recently reported quarter.
Tech site PCPer got its hands on the latest GPU market report from Mercury Research, and relays that AMD increased its market share, quarter-to-quarter by 3.2 per cent, to gain a total 29.4 per cent of the discrete GPU market in Q1 2016. It is noted that while AMD has achieved a decent gain, the Radeon range has, in recent history, enjoyed a much larger slice of the GPU market share pie.
Breaking down the discrete GPU figures between desktop and laptop graphics results in the following table:
From the breakdown above, you can see AMD did particularly well in mobile graphics and is a much closer rival to Nvidia in this segment. The desktop market share remains very strong for Nvidia with an inferred >75 per cent hold.
Mercury had a couple of interesting observations to draw from its recent research. On the red/green feud it says that AMD's gains are thanks, in part, to its renewed emphasis on quality drivers and efforts by the graphics dedicated Radeon Technologies Group. On the market sagging as a whole, Mercury thinks that the expectations of next-gen GPUs from both teams has reduced market appetite for graphics cards right now.
Looking to quarters ahead, it seems like Q3 will be the stage of a vital battle in the GPU wars, with both red and green teams pushing out their latest wares with the backing of a multitude of AiB partners.