A recent report by Taiwanese IT site DigiTimes suggests that AMD and Nvidia are going to have a lean period ahead in terms of sales of GPUs to laptop vendors. The biggest guns in the industry are all focussing upon aggressively priced laptops, 2-in-1s and so called BingBooks for Q4 2014 production and distribution. At this cheap end of the market the use of discrete mobile GPU is minimal if it exists at all.
The source of the information comes from the usual supply chain makers in Taiwan. DigiTimes' report says that Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS, Acer, Toshiba and others are all "aggressively releasing US$199-399 10- to 15-inch" laptops in the runup to the Xmas season.
AMD and Nvidia have seen this trend developing and are adapting to provide more GPUs for mid and high end laptops. DigiTimes notes that the industry shift towards the cheaper PC laptops will hurt Nvidia the most as it supplies more of these components.
Apple a "star performer" in US laptop market
As PC laptop makers race to the bottom and with svelte designer laptops from the likes of Sony and Samsung in the news due to market withdrawals it looks like Apple is capturing a good proportion of high end laptop sales, in the US at least. New figures from NPD, discussed by ZDNet's Ed Bott here, show that Apple is doing very well with sales up 16 per cent since last year. The other big selling segment is the sub $300 market (which includes Chromebooks).
Without an answer to 'Apple's secret sauce' it looks like the above named laptop makers are rushing to this sub-$300 market to get some sales. The newish 2-in-1 devices are also said to be doing quite well. Lenovo's Yoga line are proving popular with 13 per cent of all Windows machines sold in the US being one of this family of flexible laptops.
A final observation from NPD/ZDNet is that the mid market $350-600 range laptops (especially those with touchscreens) have been squeezed the hardest - with consumers plumping for the budget priced devices on one side or high end convertibles on the other.
