Has the PC industry recovered its ‘seasonal rhythms’? Analyst reports GPU sales fall

GPU shipments may have declined year-on-year in Q3, but they jumped quarter-on-quarter, leading analysts to believe the PC market is finding its feet once again.

JPR (Jon Peddie Research) says that global GPU shipments decreased 19 per cent year-on-year during the quarter, with desktop graphics chips down 13 per cent and notebooks down 22 per cent.

However, looking quarter-on-quarter, AMD’s overall unit shipments increased 15.87 per cent, Intel’s rose 5.08 per cent and Nvidia’s increased 21.39 per cent.

The attach rate of GPUs (including integrated and discrete GPUs) to PCs for the quarter was 138 per cent, up 1.24 per cent from last quarter and 29.95 per cent of PCs had discrete GPUs, which is up 3.51 per cent.

The overall PC market increased 7.55 per cent quarter-on-quarter, and decreased 8.94 per cent year-on-year, reports JPR.

"Although the PC graphics semiconductor industry continues to decline, shipments increased in the third quarter, reflecting the overall global increase in consumer confidence. GPU sales, integrated and discrete, desktop and notebook were up significantly from the last quarter," the firm said in a statement.

"The third quarter is, on average, usually up from the previous quarter, and the PC industry seems to have recovered its seasonal rhythms after the economic shock of 2009 to 2011. The 10-year average to seven per cent makes the nine per cent this year above average.

"Since a GPU goes into every system before it is shipped, GPUs are traditionally a leading indicator of the market. Most of the PC vendors are guiding cautiously for Q2 2015.

"The gaming PC segment, where higher-end GPUs are used, was a bright spot in the market in the quarter. Nvidia’s new high-end Maxwell GPUs sales were strong, lifting the ASPs for the discrete GPU market."

The add-in board (AIB) graphics card market also painted a similar picture in Q3 2015.

Quarter-to-quarter AIB shipments increased 27.6 per cent, but decreased 3.8 per cent year-on-year.

Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry’s research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, announced estimated PC graphics add-in-board (AIB) shipments and suppliers’ market share for Q3’15.

"However, in spite of the overall decline, due somewhat to tablets and embedded graphics, the PC gaming momentum continues to build and is the bright spot in the AIB market," added JPR.

"Two big introductions came in the third quarter. AMD released their Radeon AIB lineup: the Fury series, powered by it new high-bandwidth memory (HBM), and the company’s brand new Fiji GPU.

"At Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference in Japan, the company revealed its next-generation GPU code-named ‘Pascal’. AIBs based on Pascal will have up to 16GB of HBM2 with up to 1 TB/s bandwidth."

Full reports are available from the JPR website

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