This is the latest report from Jon Peddie Research on the GPUs used in PCs. It is reporting on the results of Q2'17 GPU shipments world-wide. Overall GPU shipments increased 7.2% from last quarter, AMD increased 8% Nvidia increased 10% and Intel, increased 6%. Year-to-year total GPU shipments increased 6.4%, desktop graphics increased 5%, notebooks increased 7%.

Up to now, the GPU and PC market had been showing a return to what has been normal seasonality. That pattern is typically flat to down in Q1, a significant drop in Q2 as OEMs and the channel deplete inventory before the summer months. A restocking with the latest products in Q3 in anticipation of the holiday season, and mild increase to flat change in Q4. All, of that subject to an overall decline in the PC market since the great recession of '07 and the influx of tablets and smartphones. However, this year, Q2 dGPU shipments were completely out of sync, and remarkably high, as shown in the following chart.

An update to the Steam survey results is always worth noting, especially with the added, tremendous growth Valve's online store service has seen recently. And it seems that in the Steam gaming world at least, quad-core CPUs, NVIDIA graphics cards, and Windows 10 reign supreme.

Windows 10 64-bit is the most used operating system, with 50.33% of the survey. That the second most used Windows OS is the steady, hallmark Windows 7 shouldn't come as a surprise, though it does have just 32.05% of the market now. OS X has a measly 2.95% of the grand total, while Linux comes in at an even lower 0.72%. While AMD processor submits may have increased in other software, it seems that at least in Steam, those numbers aren't reflected, since AMD's processor market share in the survey has decreased from 21.89% in February to just 19.01% as of June, even though the company's Ryzen line of CPUs has been selling like hotcakes. Quad-core CPUs are the most used at time of the survey, at 52.06%, while the next highest percentage is still the dual-core CPU, with 42.23%.

It seems AMD finally producing a competitive architecture to Intel may be showing in more than just words, but also in market share, if the recent Passmark benchmark reports are anything to go by. Passmark is a system benchmark used by builders and buyers to gauge a systems overall performance, so while it is not a complete market analysis, it is a good market indicator.

AMD market share has been historically decreasing for years relative to Intel since the launch of Intel's massively succesful "core" series of CPUs. To demonstrate this and the subsequent turnaround, Passmark has assembled the following neat little "Red vs Blue" graph below, showing historic and present market figures:If we examine the above graph, we find the most recent trend of AMD market gains has not been mirrored since about 2005-2006, which certainly is a positive indicator for the market perception of AMD's product performance. It would seem for once AMD is not only competitive in words, but also where it matters: In the hearts and minds of system builders.

Jon Peddie Research has released another of their interesting GPU market analysis, which the analyst firm pegs as currently gearing up to a strong Q3. However, this gearing-up comes on the back of a "moderate" quarter, which in reality means there was a seasonal decrease of -17.5% in overall GPU shipments compared to last quarter. This -17.5% decrease takes from a -25% decrease in AMD products, Nvidia decreased -26%, and -14% in Intel's products. This translates into a YoY decrease of -4.5% in overall GPU shipments, with a whole -13.5% in desktop platforms and the saving grace in the 2% rise in mobile GPU shipments. Overall discrete GPU market share is increasing compared to their iGPU counterparts, for the third consecutive quarter.

Intel showed the highest gain in the quarter, in a market that seems to have to have returned to normal seasonal cycles. This quarter was appropriately down (normally it is flat to down), and the Gaming PC segment, where higher-end GPUs are used, was once again the bright spot in the overall PC market for the quarter. JPR sets the tablet craze as ending, bringing much needed stability to the PC market, as users realize a tablet is useful for a lot of things, but can never replace a PC for performance, screen size, or upgradability.

There have been some reports that Intel's CPU division has gotten a sales decline of about $150 million, and that AMD has, conversely, seen its processor sales increase by around the same amount. This would seem to beget a straight, logic leap - that AMD was calling to itself sales that would have belonged to Intel. With Ryzen, AMD did make a great product that consumers are looking to buy, and if recent Passmark statistics are anything to go by, it would seem that yes, AMD achieved its sales increase on the back of Intel sales.

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced it owns 16 percent of the global channel SSD unit market share for 2016. Data was compiled by the research firm, Forward Insights, which has been analysing the non-volatile semiconductor industry since 2008. Forward Insights has been at the forefront of providing independent market analysis and information to many manufacturers including Kingston.

According to Forward Insights, a total of 63 million SSDs were shipped worldwide in the channel in 2016 with Kingston accounting for nearly 10.1 million units. The amount represented 16 percent or second-most in the global market, showing Kingston's growth as one of the top suppliers of SSDs. The sales channel is comprised of distributors, resellers, retail/e-tail, system builders and solutions providers.

AMD Ryzen, the high performance processor based on the company's "Zen" micro-architecture, will increase the company's market-share of the desktop CPU market in Q2-2017, according to sources from motherboard manufacturers, in a report by Taiwan-based industry observer DigiTimes. The report states that motherboard manufacturers are "optimistic about [Ryzen's] high price/performance ratio," prompting them to ramp up orders of motherboards for the new platform, from their suppliers.

According to the report, the new platform built around the AMD Ryzen processor will be officially released by the end of February 2017, and will enter global mass-shipments in March. It will help increase AMD's desktop processor market share in the following quarter. The sources point out that motherboard vendors are sourcing high-end X370, mid-range B350, and entry-level A320 chipsets from AMD, and their new product designs are now in the final stage of related testing. The B350 and A320 chipsets are already launched, to support the 7th generation A-Series "Bristol Ridge" APUs.

AMD has definitely been on the upswing in recent times, with CEO Lisa Su having seemingly conducted a frail, collapsing company through the muddiest waters in its history. The general sentiment towards the company seems to now be leaning towards the "bullish" side of the equation, which translated into a cool $10.66 per stock at Friday's closing time (having increased, after hours, towards the $10.80 mark. This is great news for a company which has essentially increased their stock value by a factor of four in the last year alone.

Shares of AMD's rival Nvidia, however, have risen 60% in the past three months and nearly 200% in the past year. NVIDIA's share value closed last Friday at a historic $100.41 (having since declined towards $99.55), over a strong bullish sentiment towards the company, which has recently signed a Warrant Termination Agreement with Goldman Sachs for a $63 million value. This basically shows investors that the company has sufficient cash so as not to allow them to see their share value diluted by the sudden entry in circulation of $63 million of shares, should Goldman Sachs exercise their (now terminated) warrant.

The folks over at 3dcenter.org have compiled comprehensive historical GPU AIB market share data for our digestion. While we recently reported on Q3'16 and its comparison to the quarter before and the same period last year, this information spans a near 14 year quarter-on-quarter time frame. The compilers have quite helpfully included points of reference along the timeline which highlight the two major GPU manufacturers milestone desktop product line debuts.

It is worth noting that their exact numbers differ slightly to the ones Jon Peddie Research provided as 3dcenter have also cited the work of Mercury Research, which appears more conservative. The figures provided in their own graph split the difference between the two sources to give us a more impartial look at the market.

Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the graphics and multimedia industry's research and consulting firm, announced estimated PC graphics add-in-board (AIB) shipments and suppliers' market share for Q3'16. The last two quarters have seen both NVIDIA and AMD release and expand a new AIB line-up, the former launching the GeForce 10 series, powered by "Pascal" GPU's and the latter releasing the Radeon 400 series, powered by "Polaris" GPU's.

JPR's AIB Report tracks PC add-in graphics boards (AIBs), which carry discrete graphics chips. AIBs are used in desktop PCs, workstations, servers, and other devices such as scientific instruments. They can be factory installed or sold directly to customers as aftermarket products. In all cases, AIBs represent the higher end of the graphics industry using discrete chips and private high-speed memory, compared to the integrated GPUs in CPUs or SOCs that share slower system memory.

The global graphics processing unit (GPU) market 2016-2020 report says the increasing adoption of integrated GPUs over discrete GPUs is one of the major trends witnessed in the global GPU market. Currently, there is increasing adoption of integrated GPUs, which are used in notebooks, desktops, and workstations across the globe.

This increasing adoption is mainly attributed to the growing need of enhanced visual content by end-consumers. In addition, end-consumers are demanding high memory graphics in their systems. In order to meet such demands, graphic processor vendors are providing high graphics through integrated GPUs. Thus, the increasing adoption of integrated GPUs over discrete GPUs is one of major trends that is propelling the growth of the market. Complete report on graphics processing unit market spread across 58 pages, analyzing major companies and providing 30 data exhibits is now available here.

Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, announced estimated PC graphics add-in-board (AIB) shipments and suppliers' market share for Q3'15. Two big introductions came in the third quarter. AMD released their Radeon AIB lineup: the Fury series, powered by it new high-bandwidth memory (HBM), and the company's brand new Fiji GPU.

At Nvidia's GPU Technology Conference in Japan, the company revealed its next-generation GPU code-named "Pascal." AIBs based on Pascal will have up to 16GB of HBM2 with up to 1 TB/s bandwidth. JPR's AIB Report tracks PC add-in graphics boards (AIBs), which carry discrete graphics chips. AIBs are used in desktop PCs, workstations, servers, and other devices such as scientific instruments. They are sold directly to customers as aftermarket products, or are factory installed. In all cases, AIBs represent the higher end of the graphics industry using discrete chips and private high-speed memory, compared to the integrated GPUs in CPUs that share slower system memory.

Mercury Research published its market analysis for PC Graphics, for the second quarter of 2015 (April-June), this is an important quarter as this is when people tend to buy or upgrade their PCs for the summer break. According to the numbers posted by Mercury Research, NVIDIA hit a new record in discrete GPU market share. In the assessment period, 76.4 percent of desktop discrete GPUs were NVIDIA, up from 63.8 percent in Q2-2014. AMD, the only other desktop discrete GPU maker, saw its share drop to 23.6 percent.

The mobile discrete GPU figures were slightly better for AMD, with the company making up 34.6 percent, slightly up from 33.2 percent in Q2-2014. NVIDIA slipped proportionately down to 65.4 percent, from 66.8 percent in Q2-2014. When being a "discrete" GPU is no longer a criteria, and Intel is added to the mix, i.e. every CPU with graphics Intel sold, and every APU AMD sold (including the ones it sold to Microsoft and Sony), NVIDIA makes up 15.7 percent, AMD 14 percent, and Intel a whopping 70.1 percent. The big-picture isn't looking good. PC graphics shipments declined by 8 percent over the quarter, and down 21 percent from the same time last year. This is the worst on-year decline since the 2008 Financial Crisis.

Lenovo Group today announced results for its first fiscal quarter ended June 30, 2015. Quarterly revenue was US $10.7 billion, a 3 percent increase year-over-year. First quarter pre-tax income decreased 80 percent year-over-year to US $52 million. Net income declined 51 percent year-over-year to US$105 million. Lenovo saw severe challenges in its main markets. It faced significant declines in the global PC and tablet markets, as well as slowing growth and increasing competition - especially in China - in smartphones. There were macroeconomic challenges in Brazil and Latin America and large currency fluctuations, intensifying competition, which hurt Motorola's profitability in particular. Finally, Lenovo saw a rapidly shifting technology demand landscape in the enterprise business.

Despite this tough environment, Lenovo continued to deliver solid results. Its PC business reached record worldwide share of 20.6 percent. It gained share in every geography and achieved the # 3 position in the critical U.S. market, with record high share of 13 percent. Lenovo gained nearly one point of share and strengthened its #3 position in the tablet market. For the third consecutive quarter, the enterprise business had positive operating margin, before non-cash M&A-related accounting charges. In smartphones the company accelerated its shift from a carrier-focused business model in China to the open market in the rest of the world, which drove Lenovo brand smartphone volume outside China up 68 percent year-on-year.

Microsoft Corp. today announced that revenues for the quarter ended June 30, 2015 were $22.2 billion. Gross margin, operating loss, and loss per share for the quarter were $14.7 billion, $(2.1) billion, and $(0.40) per share, respectively.

These results include the impact of a $7.5 billion non-cash impairment charge related to assets associated with the acquisition of the Nokia Devices and Services (NDS) business, in addition to a restructuring charge of $780 million. There was also a charge of $160 million related to the previously announced integration and restructuring plan. Combined, these items totaled $8.4 billion or a $1.02 per share negative impact. Excluding this impact, operating income and EPS would have been $6.4 billion and $0.62, respectively. During the quarter, Microsoft returned $6.7 billion to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends.

The following table reconciles these financial results reported in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles ("GAAP") to Non-GAAP financial results. Microsoft has provided this Non-GAAP financial information to aid investors in better understanding the company's performance. All growth comparisons relate to the corresponding period in the last fiscal year.

In a bid to regain market share lost to Intel and Killer (Qualcomm) in the DIY motherboard market, particularly with motherboards targeted at online gaming PC builds; Realtek unveiled a new onboard LAN solution called the Realtek Dragon. Intel and Killer have replaced Realtek as a preferred onboard Ethernet chip provider for DIY PC motherboards over the past two generations, as perception of their lower driver overhead, lower latencies, and other advantages spread. Sensing that merely improving drivers for its existing RTL8111 family of PCIe gigabit Ethernet PHY chips won't fix the situation, Realtek sought to give its latest generation an off-beat brand name that it hopes could appeal to the DIY crowd.

At the heart of the Realtek Dragon is the new RTL8118AS, a PCIe gigabit Ethernet PHY, much like the 8111 family. Realtek says it made refinements to the chip over previous generations, which will offer better performance (lower driver overhead) for traffic with small UDP packets, which is how most online multiplayer games work, and lower power consumption than competing solutions, such as the Killer E2200. Realtek even set a new branding for its chip, and will allow motherboard makers to print it on their PCBs, just as they print branding for Killer or Intel onboard LAN solutions. Realtek Dragon will make its debut with certain socket LGA1151 motherboards by ECS.

Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, today announced estimated graphics chip shipments and suppliers' market share for 2014 2Q in its Market Watch quarterly PC graphics report, an industry reference since 1988.

Graphics processors, stand-alone discrete devices, and embedded processor-based GPUs are ubiquitous and essential components in all systems and devices today -- from handheld mobile devices, PCs, and workstations, to TVs, servers, vehicle systems, signage, game consoles, medical equipment, and wearables. New technologies and semiconductor manufacturing processes are taking advantage of the ability of GPU power to scale. The GPU drives the screen of every device we encounter -- it is the human-machine interface.

The third quarter is typically the big growth quarter, and after the turmoil of the recession, it appears that trends are following the typical seasonality cycles of the past.

In another strong quarter, Chromebook shipments increased by 67% QoQ and are projected to double in size YoY. Acer continues to maintain its lead over other vendors in the market, including Samsung, HP, and Dell. The top three leading vendors - Acer, Samsung, and HP - accounted for 74% shipment share during 1H 2014 and are forecasted to maintain market control through 2H 2014, according to quarterly data from technology market intelligence firm ABI Research.

"Consumers are hungry for a product that is cost effective but also provides the versatility and functionality of a laptop," says Research Analyst Stephanie Van Vactor. "The growth of the Chromebook market demonstrates a niche that is gaining traction among consumers."

The questionable need of Chromebooks by consumers contributed to the slow start of these devices; however, vertical markets such as elementary education still remain a driving force. In emerging markets, especially in Asia-Pacific and Eastern Europe, business-purchasing entities account for 75% of Chromebook sales. ABI Research also forecasts that North America will account for 78% of the Chromebook market in 2014, while other regions, especially Asia-Pacific and Western Europe, are expected to grow in market share by 2019.

Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, announced estimated graphics add-in-board (AIB) shipments and suppliers' market share for 2014 2Q.

The quarter in general
JPR found that AIB shipments during Q2 2014 behaved according to past years with regard to seasonality, but the decrease was more than the 10-year average. The news was disappointing, quarter-to-quarter, the market dropped 17.5 % (compared to the desktop PC market, which increased 1.3%).

• Total AIB shipments decreased this quarter to 11.5 million units from last quarter.
• AMD's quarter-to-quarter total desktop AIB unit shipments decreased 10.7%.
• Nvidia's quarter-to-quarter unit shipments decreased 21%.
• Nvidia continues to hold a dominant market share position at 62%.
• Figures for the other suppliers were flat to declining.

The storage business is one of Toshiba's strategic focus businesses, alongside energy and healthcare. Our data storage products, such as HDD and SSD, are the key components of the storage business, along with NAND Flash, and we will make our business more competitive and larger by supporting cloud and social network service businesses that are expected to see rapid expansion.

HDD responsible for storing large amount of data and SSD responsible for high speed processing are seen as co-existing, complementing each other's characteristics. While offering a wide line-up of storage products, our main focus will be the enterprise market and the following products and targets.

• Near line HDD: Expand market share by increasing the capacity.
• Enterprise SSD: Gain market share by utilizing advantages of in-house NAND flash memory and expanding line-up for high speed processing storage at data centers.

The worldwide personal and entry-level storage (PELS) market was up by 1.5% year over year with almost 17 million units shipped in the second quarter of 2014 (2Q14), according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Personal and Entry Level Storage Tracker. Shipment values increased along with unit shipments by 1.8% from a year ago to $1.5 billion.

Hard disk drive (HDD) vendors continued to increase their share of PELS units shipped, gaining 3.3 points year over year to grow to 77.6% market share in 2Q14. Although the entry-level storage market continued to be dominated by the mainstream non-HDD vendors with 58.8% unit shipment market share, their market share was down 13.0 points year over year.

TSMC may lose out on orders to competing fabs on the 16 nanometer (nm) and 14 nm nodes, in terms of market share, in 2015, according to company chairman Morris Chang. Chips built on the 16 nm node will amount to single-digit percentages of the company's output in the year. Samsung Electronics is expected to take the lead on these processes, as it just netted orders from Qualcomm, a major mobile baseband chip and SoC designer.

Chang stressed that 20 nm and 16 nm will drive revenue for the next three years for major fabs. 20 nm products will account for 10 percent of TSMC's revenues in Q3 2014, will expand to 20 percent in Q4, and contribute over 20 percent of TSMC's revenues in 2015. TSMC's 16 nm node will be competitive for products such as mobile baseband chips, ICs, GPUs, NICs, and server chips. Despite these setbacks in the company's competitive outlook, it expects its revenues to grow by 12.6 to 14.2 percent sequentially in Q3 2014, year over year.

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 74.4 million units in the second quarter of 2014 (2Q14), a year-on-year decline of -1.7%, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker. The results reflect the smallest decline in global PC shipments since the second quarter of 2012 when declining shipments of mini notebooks combined with a surge in tablet sales to disrupt the PC market.

Buoyed by both continued business PC replacements and returning consumer interest, the preliminary results for 2Q14 are markedly better than the projected decline of -7.1% for the quarter. Despite the end of Windows XP support in early April, it appears many Windows XP migrations continue to take place. Most major vendors saw solid growth, and early indications also point to desktop shipments being stronger than expected in some areas, signaling continued business buying. The consumer side also appears stronger than expected, with growing activity among the lower-priced models as well as Chromebooks.

Worldwide purpose-built backup appliance (PBBA) factory revenues declined -2.5% year over year to $664.5 million in the first quarter of 2014 (1Q14), according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Purpose-Built Backup Appliance Tracker. In addition, the total PBBA open systems market fell -2.6% year over year in 1Q14 with revenues totaling $598.9 million while the mainframe market experienced a decline of -1.1% for the same period. Total worldwide PBBA capacity shipped for open systems and mainframe PBBA systems reached 398,280 terabytes, increasing 7.1% year over year.

"The worldwide PBBA market is showing maturity coupled with a typically slow first quarter of the calendar year," said Robert Amatruda, Research Director, Data Protection and Recovery. "We expect the PBBA market will resume growth over the months ahead as customers continue to embrace appliance form factors to meet their growing data protection and recovery challenges."

Worldwide PC monitor shipments totaled nearly 33.7 million units in the first quarter of 2014 (1Q14), a year-over-year decline of -0.4%, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Monitor Tracker. IDC expects worldwide shipments to continue on their current trajectory, slipping to 106 million units for the full year 2018.

"Despite the overall decline, the shipment totals were stronger than the forecast of 31 million units," said Phuong Hang, Program Director, Worldwide Trackers at IDC. "Geographically, Japan and the Middle East and Africa (MEA) regions delivered the largest gains during the first quarter while Dell and HP both experienced solid shipment growth."