Report: PC Graphics Shipments Down in Fourth Quarter

A report released by Jon Peddie Research on Tuesday states that during the fourth quarter of 2012, only 28.8 million discrete GPUs were shipped. Compared to third quarter numbers, shipments dropped 16-percent while year-to-year (4Q12 to 4Q11) shipments dropped 9.7-percent. Nvidia suffered the most damage, feeling a 16.7-percent drop in quarter-to-quarter discrete GPU sales.

According to the report, AMD fell in second place, seeing a 13.6-percent drop in quarter-to-quarter discrete GPU sales, followed by Intel which saw only a 2.9-percent drop. Yet the overall PC market grew 2.8-percent from 3Q12 to 4Q12 even though the entire GPU market (embedded and discrete) declined 8.2-percent. The firm indicates that the decline could have been greater had Intel's improved embedded GPU not been "good enough".

"On a year-to-year basis, we found that total graphics shipments during Q4'12 dropped 11.5-percent as compared to PCs which declined by 5.6-percent overall," the firm said. "GPUs are traditionally a leading indicator of the market, since a GPU goes into every system before it is shipped and most of the PC vendors are guiding down for Q1'13."

The report stated that the "turmoil" in the PC market has caused a new forecast. The new Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) for the PC graphics sector is now 3.2-percent from 2012 to 2016. Total shipments of GPUs in 2016 will be to 549 million units whereas the ten-year average change for graphics for quarter-to-quarter is now a growth of -1.3-percent.

In addition to the GPU market, the report states that AMD's APUs increased 0.8-percent from 3Q12 in the desktop sector, but dropped a dramatic 19.1-percent in notebooks. In the same timeframe, Intel's mobile solution jumped 3-percent in desktops but fell 6.76-percent in notebooks. Meanwhile, Nvidia's discrete GPUs for desktops dropped 15.1-percent while its discrete GPUs for laptops dropped 18.4-percent.

A provided chart shows that Intel ruled the graphics market in 4Q12 with a 63.4-percent share, followed by AMD with 19.7-percent and Nvidia with 16.9-percent. The firm's report does not cover handhelds (i.e., mobile phones), x86 Servers or ARM-based tablets (i.e. iPad and Android-based Tablets), Smartbooks, or ARM-based Servers.

For more information about Jon Peddie Research's findings, check out the full report here.

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