GPU Shipments Drop Significantly in Q4 2008

From DailyTech: With major computer component sales being very tightly dependant on the sales of computers, a downturn in the PC market inevitably leads to a downturn in component sales like memory, GPU, and CPUs. The latest GPU shipment numbers from Jon Peddie Research (JPR) are in and things don’t look good for the GPU market.

The shipment numbers for Q4 2008 are in for the graphics market and total shipments for the quarter was 72.35 million units. During Q4 of 2007, the number of GPUs shipped was 100.5 million. In Q3 2008, 111.26 million GPUs were shipped showing a marked drop in quarter-to-quarter shipments of GPUs.

The drop during the Q4 holiday shopping season is also indicative of the low holiday spending seen in virtually all markets. JPR reports that Q4 2008 was the first quarter that shipments had decreased compared to Q3 since 2000. Growth from Q3 2008 to Q4 2008 was down 34.98%.

All graphics vendors were hit with reduced shipments, though some firms were harder hit than others were. JPR reports that NVIDIA was able to gain market share on ATI over the quarter. In Q4 2008 NVIDIA had 30.7% of the GPU market compared to AMD's 19.3% of the market. Intel was still the leader holding 47.8% of the market.

It's interesting to point out that NVIDIA had claimed in October of 2008 that it would use the 9400M GPU to grab 30% of the graphics market and as of Q4 2008, it has made good on that prediction. JPR points out that the Q4 GPU shipment numbers in relation to the Q3 2008 numbers are tempered a bit by the fact that Q3 numbers were surprisingly high.

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