Although the second quarter in the PC sector is usually the weakest of the year, the three big chip manufacturers Intel, Nvidia and AMD have increased their sales figures both compared to the previous quarter and the same period last year, report market researchers. That defies the lack of components and the continuing delivery problems.
According to the findings of the Market researcher from Jon Peddie Research (JPR) 42 percent more processors were sold in the second quarter of this year than last year and also 3.5 percent more than in the previous quarter. At the same time, sales of graphics chips and combination processors with integrated graphics units rose slightly less in the same period: by 37 percent compared to 2020 and 3.4 percent above the first quarter of 2021.
Since a total of more processors than chips with graphics acceleration were sold, more systems are limited to the graphics unit that is already integrated. Discrete graphics chips such as those in notebooks or graphics cards were consequently also sold 2.9 percent less than in the previous quarter. Nevertheless, JPR counted 123 million graphics chips sold in the second quarter.
Intel and Nvidia gain market share
Among the three manufacturers of PC graphics chips and units, Intel remains by far the market leader due to its dominance in processors. Intel increased its GPU market share from 63.5 percent in 2020 to 68.3 percent most recently. AMD fell from 17.7 percent in the second quarter of the previous year to 16.5 percent, while Nvidia fell from 18.9 percent in 2020 to 15.2 percent in the second quarter of 2021.
This development is likely to be due to AMD processors with integrated graphics units, especially in light and business notebooks. Nvidia continues to lead the way in discrete graphics chips such as graphics cards and gaming laptops. In this area, Nvidia was able to increase its market share year-on-year from 80 to 83 percent, while AMD fell from 20 to 17 percent. Intel does not yet have its own graphics chips on offer, these will be delayed until the beginning of 2022.
For the next few years, market researchers are forecasting an average of 3.5 percent more graphics chips sold per year by 2025. In the years 2020 to 2025, a total of 3.3 billion graphics chips are to be sold. The proportion of discrete graphics chips is to increase to 25 percent by 2025. At the beginning of this year, market researchers had assumed 21 percent of systems that would be equipped with graphics cards or graphics chips instead of relying solely on the integrated graphics unit.
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