- Tuesday, 24 November 2009
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Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die
Graphic research points to market slippage
RESEARCH OUTFIT Jon Peddie (JPR) released its Q1 estimates for graphics shipments and supplier market shares today, showing negative first quarter growth expectations for computer manufacturers and OEMs.
OEMs generally use the first three months of the year to flush out the channel by flogging off unsold Yuletide stock. The first quarter of 2008 didn’t only see a drop,over the previous quarter, it saw the biggest drop since 2005.
JPR, reckons the numbers were presaged by 2007 showing the biggest drop in Q4 shipments in four years. Total shipments for the quarter were only 95 million units, down 5.6 per cent from last quarter, probably due to market slowdown.
But, year-on-year, JPR said that compared to Q1 of 2007 shipments were up by 20 per cent this year.
Peddie puts Intel's share of the total PC graphics market share at 43 per cent, its inegrated efforts holding Nvidia to 33 per cent and Daamit to 19.
Chipzilla ownz 38 per cent of the desktop market, to Nvidia’s 36 per cent, with AMD at 19 per cent. As a whole the desktop market declined by six per cent this quarter with only 62.3 million units sold.
Nvidia ate Intel dust in the notebook market too, although Intel did drop a percentage point over last quarter while Nvidia gained one. This was not particularly significant, however, seeing as Intel controlled 53 per cent while Nvidia was stuck with 27. AMD clung to 17 per cent.
Notebook chipments were five per cent down this quarter over last, with only 32.6 million units being shifted, representing a 34 per cent slice of the overall market.
Things are set to go from bad to worse, as the first quarter is predicted to go from “seasonally down” to a significant drop in the second quarter due to more pressure from a faltering US economy.
Peddie Research reckons his fact is compounded by the fact that neither AMD nor Nvidia is expected to release any new AIBs any time soon.
Jon Peddie said: "No segment had any growth, even the gravity-defying notebooks. This is the first time notebook shipments have slipped in several years." µ
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Luckily, computers are needed these days... they're right up there with cars and oil for alot of people. Because of this the market will never die, but it might become somewhat weaker for a time.
Obviously PC games drive sales. The communication between consumer, graphics card maker, and PC games builder is broken. I'm hating to go to a console.
"Daamit" should be allcaps because component initials were once included in quatrain written by Adamson Rust.

As to market saggage, the highly reliable pounds are disproportionately askew causing top heaviness, teetering like a mad totter. If the organs are out of kilter, then the bagpipes yield excess play and the chicks come home to roost out of the frying pan who colludes with the pot in accusing the kettle of partaking in the black arts of tempests in teaspots. But I dae nae knaw whiten the price o stuff in Cheenae or India bees. The bucks dae nae stoop here. Me money's no good, an me name is MUD. An' tumbled massa in de ditch; He died. Jimmy cracked korn, and I don't care; Old Massa's goin away.
Is the last change in the Notebook market related to the falling prices on Laptops. 

First of all we have the Asus Eee, that have been a huge hit in the lowend market. Have this development made people wait until they could get hold of this superb little machine. A lot of customer had to wait for their Eee, and I still think other may wait for the new machine with Atom CPUs

And last year was the first ever where the really good GPUs are sold in a lot of quite powerful machines, in every segment. (Not only the high end gamer, and portable workstation segment). At very low prices, too. Most of the laptops with a mid-range GPU and mid-range GPU, dropped 30% or more in a year.

But I would still tell anyone I know to wait while the prices are dropping so fast, and while the chips are shrinking.

I don't think that this is very alarming to be honest. I think next year is where we'll start seeing growth again.

Quite frankly the reasons i can come up with for this are lacklustre quality and speed incrementations for the current gen over previous gen cards, no need to upgrade graphics (with the exception of crysis and Vista usage - and even then a X1950 will do you fine for most games) and i also reckon that we're at one of those lulls in computer building/buying cycles. 

Every man and his dog went out and bought a Core 2 Duo system after release and many gamers will have also bought mid-high range graphics cards to go with them. As i noted above, the current crop of cards aren't really worth the price/performance gain over previous top of the line gen cards and so no one is going to upgrade their systems until the next cycle.... hence my prediction of next year. 

Maybe i'm wrong...
Actually, the Steam survey says a bit different.
Dual-core systems are only a tad more than 36%, and Quad-core is a shade over 4%.

The bulk is still single-core systems (almost 60%).

That is for over 1.6 million discreet results, so it is rather significant of the market, I'd think.