Jon Peddie Research has released its latest report on the graphics market, announcing that combined discrete and integrated GPU shipments in Q4 2012 dropped 8.2% sequentially and 11.5% on a year-to-year basis. The underwhelming results were largely blamed on the popularity of tablets and the persistent recession, causing JPR to revise its compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for PC graphics from 2012 to 2016 to 3.2%, with the total shipments of graphics chips in 2016 expected to be 549 million units.

It was a disappointing quarter for every one of the major players. Intel's shipments dropped the least quarter-to-quarter at just 2.9%, while AMD slipped 13.6% and Nvidia was down 16.7%. In terms of market share Intel held on to its dominant position and actually gained 3.4% to 63.4% at the expense of AMD and Nvidia, which dropped 1.2 and 1.73 points respectively to 19.7% and 16.9%.

Jon Peddie notes that the numbers suggest more and more users are finding that embedded graphics, such as those found in Intel's and AMD's processors, are "good enough."

  Market share this quarter Market share last quarter Unit change quarter to quarter Share difference quarter to quarter Market share last year
AMD 19.7% 21.0% -13.6% -1.2% 24.8%
Intel 63.4% 60.0% -2.9% 3.4% 59.2%
Nvidia 16.9% 18.6% -16.7% -1.73% 15.7%
Via/S3 0.0% 0.4% -100% 0.0% 0.4%
Total 100.0% 100.0% -8.2%   100.2%

Here are a few other findings from JPR's latest report on the graphics market:

  • AMD's quarter-to-quarter total shipments of desktop APUs increased 0.8% from Q3 and declined 19.1% in notebooks. The company's overall PC graphics shipments slipped 13.6%.
  • Intel's quarter-to-quarter desktop processor-graphics EPG shipments increased from last quarter by 3%, and Notebooks fell by 6.76%. The company's overall PC graphics shipments dropped 2.9%.
  • Nvidia's quarter-to-quarter desktop discrete shipments fell 15.1% from last quarter; and, the company's mobile discrete shipments dropped 18.4%. The company's overall PC graphics shipments declined 16.7%.
  • Year to year this quarter AMD shipments declined 29.4%, Intel dropped 5%, Nvidia slipped 4.6%, and VIA fell 10% from last year.
  • Total discrete GPUs (desktop and notebook) fell 15.9% from the last quarter and were down 9.7% from last year for the same quarter due to the same problems plaguing the overall PC industry.