Sales figures for the fourth quarter have been released by Jon Peddie Research and they reveal a significant increase of sold GPUs (Graphics Processing Units). According to JPR, 106.37 million GPUs were shipped during Q4 2007, which is 17% more than Q4 2006. The three largest GPU manufacturers NVIDIA, AMD/ATI and Intel all increased their shipments compared to last year. NVIDIA shipped 42.3% more chips, Intel increased its shipments by 40.2% and AMD saw an increase of 26.2%.
If we instead focus on market shares and compare Q4 with the previous quarter, things are a lot different. AMD/ATI gained the most and increased its share by 3.7 percentages (to 22.8%), followed by Intel with 3.1 percentages (41.1%), while NVIDIA actually shipped fewer GPUs and decreased by 2.1 percentages (down to 31.8%).
Intel is still the largest GPU manufacturer on the market, not just overall, but it leads both desktop and mobile segments. All thanks to its integrated chips. Intel holds 41.1% of the total graphics circuit market, which is an increase of 3.7%, compared to Q4 2006, while NVIDIA grew to 31.8% (up 3.4%) and AMD dropped to 22.8% (down 0.2%).
Considering these figures, it looks like AMD is about to climb back, while Intel is still going strong, with NVIDIA on the downfall. The upcoming launch of the GeForce 9 series is looking ever more important, and any further delay could become quite harmful to the company.
