According to the latest report of the Jon Peddie Research Institute, it appears that Nvidia continues to hold a clear lead over its main competitor AMD in the last quarter of 2018.
According to the recent report, for every AMD graphics card sold worldwide, 4 Nvidia signed graphics cards were sold in the fourth quarter of 2018. This situation contrasts with the mixed response from players and critics of Nvidia’s RTX series, which was criticized for its very high price in terms of improved performance over the previous generation.
Within a year, AMD has seen a significant decline in the graphics card market. The fall is severe. The market share rose from 33.7% to 18.8%. Specifically, this decline is worrying as it accelerated in the fourth quarter of 2018. AMD’s presence increased from 33.7% to 25.7% in the third quarter of 2018 and then to 18.8% in the fourth quarter.
Graphics card, AMD gets a slap in the face
The big winner is Nvidia, which in turn sets records. With a market share of over 80%, the company is the dominant player in the market. It has to be said that the giant does not leave its competitor alone with several GPU architectures (Maxwell, Pascal, and Turing), optimizations and innovations. For example, the latest generation of the GeForce RTX 20 series introduces RT cores and tensor cores.
In the last quarter of 2018, Nvidia gained 81.2% of the desktop graphics market, 6.9% more than in the previous quarter and 14.9% more than last year. AMD now has a market share of 18.8%.
The situation can be easily explained: In addition to the fact that Nvidia offers cards that are generally more efficient than the competition, the brand also offers a variety of references on the market. Meanwhile, AMD has offered only a slight refreshment to the Polaris range, with very few references despite a localized price advantage.
However, with the introduction of the new generation of maps with Navi architecture, the situation for AMD could improve this summer.
Fall of Crypto Market
During the quarter, the graphics card market generated $2.8 billion, a decrease of 40.2% compared to 2017. This sudden decline is again very easy to explain: Last year we witnessed the spectacular rise of Bitcoin, which boosted sales of graphics cards to undermine crypto. With the fall of many crypto devices, users are now more reluctant to invest in quite expensive mining equipment. In addition, the used market is currently saturated with high-end graphics cards, with many users initially interested in Bitcoin and willing to resell their RIGs to recoup their investment.
All this has enabled Nvidia to gain a good advantage over its competitors. This dominance is confirmed by the latest Steam statistics, as Nvidia occupies only the top 15 places.
Steam Statistics
In the fourth quarter, this graphics card market represented 2.8 billion US dollars. It fell by 10.7% compared with the third quarter. In 2018, graphics cards worth 17 billion dollars were sold.