AMD has 29 per cent GPU market share

Jon Peddie Research (JPR) last week published its quarterly market watch report on GPUs that showed that the CPU market was up 20 per cent from the previous quarter, but relatively flat year-on-year. 

Now the firm has followed that up with a report focussing on the discrete GPU add-in board (AiB) market and how the major players are faring.

The report indicates that market share movement between the second and third quarters of 2016 is almost negligible. It notes that there has been a big seasonal upswing in GPU purchases, and that AiB shipments were up 38.2 per cent quarter-to-quarter (gaining 9.2 per cent year-on-year). 

The below chart shows that in spite of this increase in discrete GPU sales, the market shares between AMD and Nvidia remained stable over the quarter. 

2016 has been a big year for the graphics card market, and it has seen both AMD and Nvidia introduce new architecture and change up their manufacturing processes. 

Year-on-year figures indicate that AMD’s Polaris architecture has made the biggest impact, leading the company to claw back over 10 per cent in market share over the space of a year – up to 29.1 per cent from 18.8 per cent a year ago. 

While AMD’s recovery has been impressive, Nvidia is still in the drivers seat, with a little over 70 per cent of the market. Should Nvidia publish its report for the fourth quarter a positive will be the market share impact of the recently released GeForce GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti cards. These cards are shipping in much greater volumes than the more expensive, higher-end units. AMD has reacted in China with its Radeon RX 470D.

The contrast between the growth in AiB sales (up 9.2 per cent) and the decline of the desktop PC market (down 17.1 per cent) shows, according to JPR, why system makers are targeting a gaming PC market segment that is fueled by enthusiasts that are willing to pay more. 

All charts and diagrams via JPR.