In context: Following a turbulent 2022 and a strong recovery throughout 2023, analysts have observed that the desktop add-in-board market has returned to typical seasonality. Although shipments are slightly down compared to the last quarter, they remain significantly higher than the previous year. Meanwhile, Nvidia has increased its overwhelming market share, while Intel’s presence has almost completely disappeared.
Desktop GPU sales data from Jon Peddie Research for the first quarter of 2024 indicates that the market has stabilized after the shocks of the last few years. Although quarter-to-quarter shipments decreased slightly, analysts view this as typical for the first quarter of a year.
Add-in-board shipments totaled 8.7 million units in Q1 2024, down 7.9 percent from 9.5 million in Q4 2023, but 39.2 percent higher than the first quarter of 2023, sustaining last year’s impressive growth. Individual manufacturers mostly mirrored this pattern, with Nvidia maintaining its dominance.
Team Green’s market share increased from 80 percent last quarter to 88 percent in Q1. The company’s shipments rose by 0.9 percent quarter-over-quarter and 45.6 percent year-over-year. Meanwhile, AMD’s share dropped to where it was a year ago – 12 percent. Intel managed to hold onto a meager four percent market share in Q1 2023, a few months after entering the desktop graphics sector with the Arc Alchemist graphics cards, but has since fallen to less than one percent.
Various tech sectors have experienced significant disruption over the last few years due to factors such as the pandemic, the chip shortage, and the war in Ukraine. Desktop AIBs reached historic lows in 2022 and faced turbulence from the cryptocurrency boom, but analysts predict an industry-wide return to growth heading into the middle of the decade.
AI has dramatically boosted the GPU market, particularly Nvidia. The company, which manufactures much of the hardware for training large language models, has seen its market capitalization soar from $1 trillion last May to $3 trillion this week, making it more valuable than Apple and nearly as valuable as Microsoft.
Looking ahead in the desktop sector, Nvidia, AMD, and Intel each plan to launch new consumer graphics cards either late this year or early next year. While exact release dates are still uncertain, Nvidia is preparing to launch its enthusiast-class RTX 50 series “Blackwell” GPUs, AMD is set to ship mid-range RDNA4 products, and Intel will debut its sophomore Arc Battlemage architecture.