AMD Grabbed GPU Market Share from Nvidia, Intel in Q4

There are several interesting takeaways from the latest graphics chip shipments and suppliers' market share data from Jon Peddie Research (JPR). The first one is that Intel continues to dominate the field with a demanding 59.1 percent share of the market, down from 60.4 percent sequentially but up from 52.5 percent one year prior. Intel's dominance is a testament to the concept of integrated graphics, which is an area NVIDIA ditched to focus on discrete graphics.

The second thing that's interesting is that AMD was the only major GPU player to increase its graphics chip market share sequentially. AMD ended the quarter with a 24.8 percent share, up from 23 percent in Q3. NVIDIA, meanwhile, dropped less than half a percentage point from 16.1 percent in Q3 to 15.7 percent in Q4.


Overall, JPR says Q4 graphics shipments dropped 10.4 percent over last quarter, which is about par for the course based on seasonality demand since the economic crash of 2008 (prior to then, Q4 was a seasonally up quarter, JPR says). For the entire year, however, GPU shipments are up 8.9 percent.

JPR says discrete GPU shipments declined 12 from last quarter and were down nearly 3.5 percent compared to last year. That doesn't bode well for NVIDIA's strategy of focusing solely on discrete GPUs, though JPR doesn't take into account handhelds (mobile phones, for example), x86 Servers, ARM-based tablets, Smartbooks, or ARM-based Servers, some of which are served by NVIDIA's Tegra line.