The graphics card market is in free fall: bells are ringing for AMD

The latest reports on computer hardware show that the first quarter of the year has passed with declines. It seems that this also applies to the graphics card market. While the general decline in sales continues, Nvidia continues to dominate the market. On the AMD side, things are worrying.

Graphics card sales down

According to Jon Peddie Research, unit shipments of discrete desktop graphics cards (AIB) were down 12.6 percent from the previous quarter and 38.2 percent from the first quarter of 2022. Any recovery later in the year seems to depend on the mainstream graphics cards that AMD and Nvidia have recently released.

Nvidia, on the other hand, experienced the biggest quarter-to-quarter decline with a 15.2 percent drop in shipments, while AMD saw a 7.5 percent drop. The numbers show that consumers are no longer in a rush to upgrade their gear as in 2021. Analysts also attribute the decline to job cuts and inflation concerns linked to fears of an impending recession.

AMD lost half of its market share

Despite the drop in sales, the market share among the three GPU competitors has changed little from the previous quarter. While AMD maintains its 12 percent share in the desktop graphics card industry, Intel seems to have reduced Nvidia’s share a little. However, Intel’s road is still long, as its market share is only 4 percent, while Nvidia dominates 84 percent of the market. When we look at the change from year to year, the situation is more dramatic. AMD has lost half of its market share compared to the previous year. Most of the lost market has passed over to Nvidia.

Nvidia and AMD launched their newest mid-range graphics cards last month and received a generally lukewarm response from critics and consumers alike. The RTX 4060 and 4060 Ti received reactions with their prices and offerings. AMD, on the other hand, offered the RX 7600 much cheaper, but could not give the performance difference that would motivate the consumer.

Looking ahead, other analysts expect the fourth quarter of this year to show an improvement for all PC hardware, leading to market growth throughout 2024.