The latest results from Jon Peddie Research are out and it looks like it has been a good quarter for discrete GPU vendors, not so much for APUs however. When JPR looks at the graphics market, they include all silicon with graphics capabilities, discrete GPUs, APUs and IGPs giving a broad overview of the current state of the market.

It seems the market shares of Matrox and S3 have finally disappeared into the noise, leaving only Intel, AMD and NVIDIA represented in the breakdown of global GPU market share. In all cases the total amount of sales have gone up, which fits in with seasonal patterns and demonstrates that while the PC market may be wounded, it is far from dead. Intel's total GPU sales increased by 5% from last quarter, which translated to a loss of 3.2% of total market share. AMD saw a total increase of 7.6%, their desktop GPUs alone increased by 16.1%, however that was only enough to keep them at the same ~13% of the global GPU market. NVIDIA saw the biggest increase, a 29.5% jump in sales, which gives them just under 20% of the GPU market to call their own.

A very interesting data point from JPR's latest report shows how the overall PC market has changed over time. We have never recovered from the highs of the end of 2010, for a wide variety of reasons ranging from the long term impact of the global recession to a certain company's decision to switch from a lively two step to a stately waltz. The market is signs that the long decline we have seen may be slowing, instead of dropping by several million units during the traditionally sluggish beginning of the year it only dropped by about one million units. Consider the lack of driving reasons to do a complete upgrade of a computer this year until AMD's Ryzen and Threadripper appeared, it is quite possible we may see sales steady or perhaps even rise over 2018.

We won't know for a while yet, but the signs are more encouraging than they have been in a long time.