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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  • loops
    Yo, green team, get your price right!
    Reply
  • techbaddie
    Agree, the prices for some of the high end cards are up there.. Especially when my 470 gtx runs all the games I play at 60 FPS on 1440p... (Guild Wars 2) It's just not worth upgrading for the price
    Reply
  • balister
    Of course shipments were down, people know that AMD and NVidia typically release their new cards in March/April and the rumors (now known to be true) about AMD not releasing a significant new card and rumors flying about Titan (being considerably more powerful than GTX 690 which has been proven false now) is what kept people from buying.
    Reply
  • Immoral Medic
    The TiTan ripoff isn't going to help either. Good luck selling a bunch of those.
    Reply
  • And the fact that AMDs APUs are becoming increasingly popular and aren't counted towards this
    Reply
  • techbaddie
    Good point balister, I agree with that idea as well
    Reply
  • bigshootr8
    This shouldn't shock anyone people were feeling that we would get a new series of cards around the 2nd or 3rd quarter of this year. And if that continues to not be the case I would expect the sales to be stagnant for a while.
    Reply
  • dalethepcman
    discrete gpu = gamer/enthusiast only. Both know better than to buy a new card at the end of the product cycle. The only exception is new builds, but even then if its a team green player, I recommend they buy an el-chepo card to start with and use if to physix.
    Reply
  • Onus
    I suspect 1Q2013 will be even more dismal, with tax increases, gasoline prices, and general inflation taking bigger bites out of people's budgets.
    Reply
  • atikkur
    people waiting for the next refreshes or just holding back because this generation gpu is a bit pricey (i am looking at nvidia the most).
    Reply