Typically, the big buying seasons are more towards the end of the year rather than into summer, but sales for notebook graphics are soaring up, with both nVidia and ATI reporting high numbers. Being that it is devices in the embedded market getting all the attention, it's likely this is resonance of more and more people switching to laptops over desktops. That doesn't mean desktop sales are down, but of the 55.6 million graphics devices shipped in Q1 06, nearly 63% were for embedded devices(this includes motherboards with onboard graphics). Intel grabbed 34% of that, ATI had 26% and nVidia had 23%, so even in a desktop environment, low-power graphics are being loved.
"ATI's desktop and notebook IGC shipments are growing steadily and providing a challenge to Intel in these segments," said Lisa Epstein, a senior analyst at Jon Peddie Research. "But Nvidia is in turn challenging ATI for more lucrative discrete graphics share. Nvidia leads ATI in the discrete desktop segment and grew share in the discrete mobile segment by nearly five points in the first quarter," Epstein concluded.
Despite all this, we still see the emphasis being placed on extremely expensive, extremely beefy cards. There seems to be a disconnect between companies at this point, which brings up the question of what manufacturers really want: speed or low power.