Vendor |
This quarter |
Market share |
Last quarter |
Market share |
Growth Qtr-Qtr |
A year ago |
Market share |
Growth Yr-Yr |
AMD |
12.81 |
17.1% |
14.00 |
19.3% |
-8.5% |
17.67 |
18.6% |
-27.5% |
Intel |
37.20 |
49.7% |
34.59 |
47.7% |
7.5% |
40.52 |
42.7% |
-8.2% |
Nvidia |
23.26 |
31.1% |
22.20 |
30.6% |
4.8% |
31.02 |
32.7% |
-25.0% |
Matrox |
0.07 |
0.1% |
0.06 |
0.1% |
8.3% |
0.11 |
0.1% |
-40.9% |
SiS |
0.70 |
0.9% |
0.80 |
1.1% |
-12.5% |
1.65 |
1.7% |
-57.6% |
VIA/S3 |
0.84 |
1.1% |
0.84 |
1.2% |
0.0% |
3.91 |
4.1% |
-78.6% |
Total |
74.87 |
100.0% |
72.48 |
100.0% |
3.3% |
94.88 |
100.00% |
-21.1% |
According to JPR's Market Watch, the entire market, encompassing add-in boards and integrated GPUs, had a hard time of it. Comparing Q1 2009 to Q1 2008 we see that shipments are down from an estimated 94.88m to 74.87m - a 21.1 per cent drop. In Q1 2008 Intel had a 10-point lead over NVIDIA, with AMD/ATI firmly in third place.
The three big players took a whopping 94 per cent of the market. Bear in mind the table shows quantity rather than revenue, and NVIDIA/ATI's discrete cards can cost up to £400 a pop. Intel does extremely well in the integrated-GPU market, of course, with the majority of business PCs' graphics provided by the chip giant.
Look at the same quarter for 2009 and whilst volume shipments for the trifecta are down, Intel's minor drop enables it to grab almost 50 per cent of the market share - up from 42.7 per cent - at the expense of everyone else, according to JPR. One possible explanation of Intel's volume-related resilience may lie with the company's bundling of motherboard (and graphics) for its Atom processors, found in the majority of netbooks shipping today.
A 20 per cent-plus year-on-year drop may cause sales staff sleepless nights, but there appears to be hope on the horizon. Q1 2009 shipments were higher than Q4 2008. That's surprising because the latter packs in the holiday season. It's the first time in nine years that the first quarter has beaten shipments for the previous year's Q4.
JPR expects the overall shipments to pick-up in Q3 and Q4 of 2009, driven by new architectures, pent-up demand, depleted inventories, and arrival of new operating systems from Microsoft and Apple.
Are you procrastinating over a graphics purchase? Waiting for DX11? We'd love to hear your thoughts.
If you're interested in more-granular analysis, the latest edition of Jon Peddie's Market Watch is available now in both electronic and hard copy editions. The annual subscription price for Jon Peddie's Market Watch is $3,500 and includes four quarterly issues. Full subscribers to JPR services receive Tech Watch (the company's bi-weekly report) and a copy of Market Watch as part of their subscription. For information about purchasing Market Watch, please call 415/435-9368 or visit the Jon Peddie Research website at www.jonpeddie.com.