Q2 Surprise: Graphics Shipments up 6.3%; Notebook (Not Including Tablets) And Desktop Shipments up 2.4%

Tiburon, CA-based Jon Peddie Research (JPR), a research and consulting specializing in graphics and multimedia, has released estimated graphics chip shipments and suppliers market share metrics for Q2 2011.

The report notes that shipments during the second quarter of 2011 did not behave according to past years with regard to seasonality, and were higher on a year-to-year comparison for the quarter with 2011 shaping up to be an anomalous year as businesses take their own path to recovery.

Normally, JPR notes, the second quarter of the year is a slower business quarter in the graphics industry (and in the PC industry as a whole), but this year, Q211 didn’t conform to the normal seasonal cycle profile, with sales up significantly compared to previous years. And whlle the uanticipated Q2 growth is welcome change, it’s also a bit worrying as to whether it signifies inventory building for back to school and the holiday season, or channel stuffing.

JPR says its forecast for the coming years has been modified since their last report, less aggressive on both desktops and the notebooks/tablets that have changed the nature of the PC market. Their findings include desktops, notebooks (and netbooks), and PC-based commercial (i.e., POS) and industrial/scientific and embedded; and thus do not include handhelds (i.e., mobile phones), x86 servers or ARM-based tablets (i.e. iPad and Android-based tablets), smartbooks, or servers.

The Quarter In General

In Q211, Intel celebrated its sixth quarter of Embedded Processor Graphics CPU (EPG, a multi-chip design that combined a graphics processor and CPU in the same package) shipments, and enjoyed a 21% average growth in desktops and notebooks.

AMD and Nvidia lost in overall market share, while Intel grew compared to last quarter.

Year to year this quarter Intel had tremendous market share growth (14.7%), AMD had a loss of 14.2%, and Nvidia slipped 18.4% in the overall market partially due to the company withdrawing from the integrated segments.

The Q211 change in total shipments from last quarter increased 6.3%, significantly above the ten-year average of 3.5%, and raising concerns about an inventory buildup.

Netbooks contributed to notebook growth a bit, however, iPads and Android tablets have probably cannibalized some netbook sales.

Over 84 million PCs shipped worldwide in Q211, an increase of 2.4% compared to Q111, (based on an average of reports from Dataquest, IDC, and HSI) causing speculation that the 6.3% up-swing in graphics could be an inventory buildup and have a negative impact on Q3 or Q4.

AMD’s HPU quarter-to-quarter growth has been extraordinary at an average of 80% for desktop and notebook, and Intels EPG growth was significant at an average of 41%. This is a clear showing of the industrys affirmation of the value of CPUs with embedded graphics and is in line with our forecasts. The major, and logical, impact is on older IGPs, and some on low-end add-in boards (AIBS).

JPR notes that graphics chips (GPUs) and chips with graphics (IGPs, HPUs, and EPGs) are a leading indicator for the PC market, with at least one and often two GPUs present in every PC shipped. GPUs can take the form of a discrete chip, a GPU integrated in the chipset, or embedded in the CPU. The average has grown from 115% in 2001 to almost 160% GPUs per PC.

Since the crash of 2009, combined with the introduction and influence of ARM-based tablets, the PC market has deviated from historical trends. Until the segment for tablets is clearly defined the fluctuations in the market data is likely to continue. The disruptions probably wont settle down for a while as tablets find their place in the market and agreement can be reached on to include them in the PC market analysis, or to not include them.

Market shares shifted for the big three, and put pressure on the smaller three, and they showed a decrease in shipments as indicated in Table 1 (units are in millions.)

Intel continues to be the overall market share leader in Q211, elevated by Core i5 EPG CPUs, Sandy Bridge, and Pineview Atom sales for netbooks. AMD gained market share quarter-to quarter and Nvidia lost share. Nvidia is exiting the integrated graphics segments and shifting focus to discrete GPUs. The company showed significant discrete market share gain (30% qtr-qtr) due to they say strong connect with new Intel Sandy Bridge notebooks.

Ironically Nvidia enjoyed some serendipitous sales of IGPs in Q2. AMD share dropped 7.3 points.

For the complete report, visit:
http://jonpeddie.com/publications/market_watch/