JPR: Discrete GPU shipments down 6.5%, Nvidia gains market share

Following on from last week's report covering the entire graphics market, where Intel came on top thanks to its integrated offerings, JPR has released new market share figures related strictly to discrete add-in board (AIB) GPU shipments and sales during Q4 2011. The report takes into consideration graphics cards used in desktop PCs, workstations, and servers, that are either factory installed or sold directly to consumers.

According to the market research firm, overall discrete graphics cards shipments shrank from 17.2 million in the third quarter of 2011 to 16.1 million in the fourth, a 6.5% drop. Shipments during Q4 2011 behaved according to past years' seasonality but were lower on a year-to-year basis. In terms of sales the AIB market reached $14.9 billion, down 0.4% from 2010 due to a pull back by consumers and a decline in average selling prices.

As usual, it was a two horse race between AMD and Nvidia. The latter saw graphics cards shipments increase by 3.7% from Q3 2011 to 63.4% while AMD-based boards decreased 3.6% to 36.3% for the same period. On a year-to-year basis AMD lost market share by 2.7% while Nvidia gained 2.9%.

While the graphics card market seems to be gradually shrinking as system-on-chip and other integrated graphics solutions get more powerful, JPR notes that longstanding predictions about the death of add-in boards are greatly exaggerated, pointing out that overall graphics chips shipments are down 10.4% for the quarter whereas AIBs only declined 6.5% sequentially in a seasonally down quarter.