May 1, 2008

Overall GPU Market Up Impressive 4 Percent

Tiburon, Calif. - Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, announced estimated graphics shipments and supplier market share for the first calendar quarter of 2008.
Traditionally, the first quarter has flat to negative growth for the computer industry as retailers and OEMs sell what's left from the holiday season. In contrast, this year saw the biggest jump quarter-to-quarter in six years. This quarter saw positive growth quarter to quarter, first time in six years lead by VIA and Intel.
  
  2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
Q1 growth from Q4 5.18% -3.65% -7.63% -5.96% -3.37% -5.42% 3.94%
Table 1: Growth rates from Q3 to Q4 from 2001 to 2007

Total shipments for the quarter were 104.5 million units, up 3.9% in over last quarter. Compared to the same quarter last year shipments were up an amazing 32%. In the overall graphics market (desktops and notebooks), Intel held its first place position claiming 48% against Nvidia's 30%, while AMD moved to 17%, as shown in Table 2.

Vendor This Quarter Market Share A Year Ago Market Share Growth Yr-Yr
AMD 17.67 16.9% 17.27 21.9% 2.3%
Intel 50.10 48.0% 30.56 38.7% 63.9%
Nvidia 31.02 29.7% 22.51 28.5% 37.8%
Matrox 0.11 0.1% 0.16 0.2% -31.3%
SiS 1.65 1.6% 3.42 4.3% -51.8%
VIA/S3 3.91 3.7% 5.04 6.4% -22.5%
Total 104.46 100.0% 78.95 100.0% 32.3%
Table 2: Total Graphics Chip Market shares for Q4'07

On the desktop Intel took back its first place position with a 46% share against Nvidia's 31%, while AMD slipped to 17%. The desktop saw market saw growth of 8.5% this quarter to 71.9 million units. In the notebook market Intel held its dominant position but slipped one point to 53% while Nvidia gained a point to 27% and AMD slid a point to 17%. Notebook chips slipped 5% quarter-to-quarter to 32.6 million units, to claim 31.2% of the market as shown in Table 3.
 
Vendor Q2'07 Q3'07 Q4'07 Q1'08
AMD 10% 10% 7% 7%
Intel 50% 48% 64% 69%
Nvidia 16% 20% 19% 14%
Table 3: Market share in notebook graphics chips for 2007

The first quarter of 2008 was seasonally above normal and surprised us (like Q2, Q3, and Q4 did.)  With the complex economic pressures building in the US, we think Q2'08 may drop significantly.

"The first quarter of 2008 was uncommonly good, and exhibited significantly greater growth from  the 4th quarter of last year - which is interesting in of itself since Q4 2007 was so good," says Dr. Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research in Tiburon California. "The major growth in the desktop was for Value and Enthusiast class add-in boards (AIBs) which are a typical holiday result, so it looks like there was some carry over in the channel."

Peddie notes that Q2'08 will be an interesting quarter as AMD and Nvidia are not expected to release anymore new AIBs given the large number of
introductions in the last two quarters.

Further, says Peddie, although there is strong overall demand, and little shift in market share between GPU vendors quarter to quarter (which suggests there is no channel stuffing or double ordering), "we remain cautious about Q2's results."