JPR: Misbehaving Graphics Chip Shipments Higher than Usual in Q2

Posted 08/05/2011 at 8:56am | by Paul Lilly

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Jon Peddie Research (JPR), a market research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, said graphics chip shipments "did not behave according to past years with regard to seasonality," but in a good way for GPU makers. Graphics chips didn't back-sass or start hanging around the wrong crowd, and instead misbehaved by outright ignoring the unwritten law of seasonality that says graphics shipments are supposed to slow down in the second quarter.

"Normally, the second quarter of the year is a slower business quarter in the graphics industry (and in the PC industry as a whole)," JPR said. "This year, Q2 2011 did not conform to the normal seasonal cycle. Instead, sales were up significantly compared to previous years."

A big reason for this probably has to do with both AMD and Intel now shipping processors with integrated graphics. According to JPR, every PC shipped contains at least one GPU and many times two GPUs, bumping up the average from 115 percent in 2001 to 160 percent GPUs per PC currently.

Sandy Bridge has been particularly kind to Intel, whose share of the graphics market is now 60.7 percent, up from 54.7 percent last quarter and 52.9 percent last year. AMD is in second place with a 21.2 percent share, down from 24.7 percent both for last quarter and last year, while Nvidia is in third with a 17.5 percent share, down from 19.9 percent last quarter and 21.4 percent a year ago, according to JPR's figures.

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