Jon Peddie Research - a technically oriented marketing, research, and management consulting firm in the graphics industry.

Surprising Q1 Results, Graphics Shipments Up 10.3% While PC Shipments Down 5%

Posted by Webmaster on May 3rd 2011 | Discuss
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We found that shipments during the first quarter of 2011 behaved according to past years with regard to seasonality, and was nominal on a year-to-year comparison for the quarter. The situation changed over the course of the year and Q4’10 did not conform to the normal seasonal cycle, but was down a bit compared to previous years, so the growth in Q1 was a welcomed change.

Our forecast for the coming years has been modified since the last report, and is less aggressive on both desktops and notebooks.

The quarter in general

• In Q1’11, Intel celebrated its fifth 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 its second quarter of HPU (heterogeneous processor unit) shipments.
• AMD and Intel gained in overall market share at the expense of Nvidia from the last quarter.
• Year to year this quarter AMD had tremendous market share growth, Intel had above average growth, and Nvidia slipped significantly.
• The Q1’11 change in total shipments from last quarter increased 10.3%, significantly above the ten-year average of -4% raising concerns about an inventory buildup that will have to run down in Q2.
• Netbooks continued to contribute to notebook growth. However, the iPad has probably cannibalized some netbook sales.
• Around 83 million PCs shipped worldwide in Q1’11, a drop of 5.4% compared to Q4’10, (based on an average of reports from Dataquest, IDC, and iSuppli) causing speculation on that the 10% up-swing in graphics could be inventory buildup and will have a negative impact on Q2.