Graphics Chip Shipments Down 10 Percent in Q4 2012
The impact of the Taiwan flood reached through to graphics chips as shipments dropped from 138.5 million units in Q3 to 124 million in Q3, Jon Peddie Research (JPR) reports. Shipments were up 10 million units year-over-year.
According to the market research firm, Intel finished Q4 with 59.1 percent market share (which includes the graphics chips included in its Sandy Bridge processors), AMD with 24.8 percent and Nvidia with 15.7 percent. Both Intel and Nvidia gained market share points over Q4 2010, 6.6 points and 0.6 points, respectively, while Nvidia dropped 6.8 points due to the firms withdrawal from the integrated graphics business.
JPR estimates that discrete GPU shipments declined about 12 percent sequentially and 3.5 percent annually. On Intel's side, embedded processor graphics "had a very strong double digit growth in while notebooks dropped double digits" that resulted in an 12.3 percent sequential drop in shipments overall, JPR said. AMD saw its processor-integrated graphics jump by 44.8 percent, but notebook volume was down significantly, which brought a 3.8 percent drop of shipments sequentially.

I hate it when I lose 14.5 million units in (div/0!).
Or what happens when you have a CPU with integrated graphics, but are using a discrete graphics card?
...the good old days of price drops seem to be gone.
Market is saturated?
Hardware is more powerful than software? I.E. There's no programs/games out there worth buying to flex our $500 video cards on?
I actually believe that the market is saturated with the low end stuff. Not everyone is a gamer/die hard overclocker either.
... that sentence makes sense.
The quarter in general
This quarter, Intel celebrated its eighth quarter of shipping its Embedded Processor Graphics CPU—EPG, a multi-function design that combines a graphics processor and CPU in the same package. Intel’s desktop EPG shipments had a very strong double digit growth in while Notebooks dropped double digits. Combined with a decrease in overall IGP chipsets, Intel came in for the quarter with a -12.3% drop from Q3.
AMD had huge 44.8% desktop double digit growth in its HPU shipments, and even good growth in their desktop IGPs. However, like Intel, its overall quarter results were down due to declining notebook sales. AMD’s overall quarter to quarter results showed a -3.4% drop.
Year to year this quarter Intel gained about 7% market share, AMD gained 2.6%, and Nvidia slipped -7% in the overall market partially due to the company withdrawing from the integrated segments.
The quarter’s change in total graphics chip shipments from last quarter decreased 10.4%, above the ten-year average of 0.83%. A little over 124 graphics chips shipped, down from 138.5 million units last quarter, and up from 114 million units this quarter a year ago.
Discrete GPUs declined almost 12% from the last quarter and were down almost 3.5% from last year for the same quarter.
Almost 93.5 million PCs shipped worldwide this quarter, an increase of 1.8% compared to last quarter (based on an average of reports from Dataquest, IDC, and HSI).
Taiwan != Thailand
Thailand has bunch of Western Digital, Seagate factories, Taiwan has TSMC!
The market share for discrete GPUs, discounting integrated graphics, is 100%