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 1Q.

JPR's AIB Report tracks computer add-in graphics boards, 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, as compared to the integrated GPUs in CPUs that share slower system memory.

Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, announced estimated graphics chip shipments and suppliers' market share for 2014 1Q. For the previous three quarters, the PC graphics market has gone up. This was the first quarter to show a decrease in shipments since last. Shipments were down 11.6% quarter-to-quarter, and down 4% compared to the same quarter last year.

Quick highlights:

• AMD's overall unit shipments decreased 18.2% quarter-to-quarter, Intel's total shipments decreased 7.9% from last quarter, and Nvidia's decreased 10.4%.
• The attach rate of GPUs to PCs for the quarter was 135% and 33% of PCs had discrete GPUs, which means 67% of the PCs are using the embedded graphics in the CPU.
• The overall PC market decreased 9% quarter-to-quarter, and decreased 3.5% year-to-year.

Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, announced estimated graphics chip shipments and suppliers' market share for 2013 4Q. The quarter was the second quarter in a row to show a gain in shipments, up 1.6% quarter-to-quarter, and up 2% compared to the same quarter last year.

Quick highlights:

• AMD's overall unit shipments decreased 10.4%, quarter-to-quarter, Intel's total shipments increased 5.1% from last quarter, and Nvidia's increased 3.4%.
• The attach rate of GPUs to PCs for the quarter was 137% and 34% of PCs had discrete GPUs that means 66% of the PCs are using embedded graphics.
• The overall PC market increased 1.8% quarter-to-quarter, but declined 8.5% year-to-year.

Lenovo Group today announced record results for its third fiscal quarter ended December 31, 2013, driven by strong global execution, an innovative product portfolio and an increasing mix of PC Plus revenues. Quarterly revenue was US$10.8 billion, a 15 percent increase year-over-year, passing the US$10 billion milestone for the first time ever. Third quarter profit grew even faster with pre-tax income increasing 30 percent year-over-year to US$321 million, while earnings also grew 30 percent year-over-year to US$265 million. Lenovo shipped a record 32.6 million devices in the quarter or nearly 5 devices every second. Lenovo's third quarter mix of sales from its Mobile Internet and Digital Home division which develops PC Plus products such as smartphones, tablets and smart TVs, was 16 percent of total revenues, up from 11 percent one year ago and seven percent two years ago, with steadily improving profitability.

For the third straight quarter, Lenovo was the world's largest PC vendor, with its highest-ever quarterly market share of 18.5 percent, up 2.4 points year-over-year. Record high share in EMEA, Asia Pacific and China with number one positions in five of the seventh largest PC markets globally - supported this strong performance. Lenovo's PC shipments for the third fiscal quarter were 15.3 million units, again making it the fastest growing of the top five PC vendors. This was also the 19th quarter in a row that Lenovo outperformed the industry as a whole, growing at a 14 point premium to the market.

Total worldwide PC monitor shipments were more than 35.0 million units in the third quarter of 2013 (3Q13), an increase of 4.5% compared to the previous quarter and 1.2 million units more than forecast, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Monitor Tracker. Year-over-year growth was -8.6% in 3Q13, largely due to the ongoing decline in PC sales.

"Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan)(APeJ), Western Europe, and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) outperformed the overall market in the third quarter and increased their regional market shares," said Jennifer Song, Research Analyst, Worldwide Trackers at IDC. "China and India were the top growth drivers within APeJ, while Germany and Russia were the leading country markets in Europe."

Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, announced estimated graphics chip shipments and suppliers' market shares for 2013 3Q. Q3'13 was the second quarter in a row to show a gain in shipments, up 1.6% quarter-to-quarter, but down 8.8% compared to the same quarter last year.

AMD's overall unit shipments decreased 4.2% quarter-to-quarter, Intel's total shipments increased 3.5% from last quarter, and Nvidia's increased 2.3%. The attach rate of GPUs to PCs for the quarter was 137%, which means only 73% of the PCs with embedded graphics are using them.

Dell moved ahead of Samsung in the worldwide PC monitor market for the first time since 2007, shipping more than 5.0 million units in the second quarter of 2013 (2Q13). Total PC monitor shipments for the quarter were 33.5 million units, which was 1.6 million units more than forecast but still represented a year-over-year decline of -0.7%, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Monitor Tracker.

"Dell grew its unit shipments by 12.7% compared to the first quarter of 2013, which vaulted the company into the number one position worldwide. However, Samsung continues to be the worldwide revenue leader, despite its declining shipment numbers," said Jennifer Song, Research Analyst, Worldwide Trackers at IDC. "On a geographic basis, China remained the largest market for PC monitors with 29.2% share, followed by the U.S. with 18.4% share. The number three market, Brazil, trailed by some distance with 4.3% share."

Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, announced estimated graphics chip shipments and suppliers' market share for 2013 2Q. While the news was disappointing year-to-year, the news was encouraging quarter-to-quarter. AMD overall unit shipments increased 10.9%, quarter-to-quarter, Intel increased 6.2%, and Nvidia decreased by 8%. The overall PC market declined 2.5% quarter-to-quarter while the graphics market increased 4.6%. Overall this net 7.1% increase reflects an interest on the part of consumers for double-attach-the adding of a discrete GPU to a system with integrated processor graphics, and to a lesser extent dual AIBs in performance desktop machines.

On a year-to-year basis we found that total graphics shipments during Q2'13 dropped 6.8% while PC shipments which declined by at a faster rate of 11.2% overall. GPUs are traditionally a leading indicator of the market, since a GPU goes into every system before it is shipped and most of the PC vendors are guiding down to flat for Q3'13. The popularity of tablets and the persistent economic slowness are the most often mentioned reasons for the decline in the PC market and the CAGR for PC graphics from 2012 to 2016 is -1.4%; we expect the total shipments of graphics chips in 2016 to be 319 million units.

Continued decline in demand for PC desktops has led International Data Corporation (IDC) to lower its estimate of PC monitors shipped in the first quarter of 2013 (1Q13) to 33.8 million units, down from its previous forecast of 34.7 million units for the quarter. In the latest update of the Worldwide Quarterly PC Monitor Tracker, IDC also lowered its total shipment forecast for 2013 from 140.1 million units to 134.4 million units, which will represent a 9.9% year-on-year decline. By 2017, worldwide shipments are expected to drop further to 113.6 million units.

"The continued decline in PC desktops is bringing about changes in strategy and product focus in the PC monitor market," said Jennifer Song, Research Analyst at IDC. "With Windows 8 operating system, we expect to see more touch-based monitors although price points are a little high. Average screen size of the market is also expected to increase to 21.4" in 2017 from 20.4" in 2012."

According to the latest global graphics card market share seen by Taiwanese tech industry observer DigiTimes, Palit Microsystems and PC Partner have each surpassed ASUSTek. The two relegated ASUS to the position of third biggest graphics card vendor by volume. ASUS is a vendor-neutral graphics card vendor, selling both NVIDIA GeForce and AMD Radeon graphics cards; while Palit beat it with a predominantly GeForce-based product stack. Although Palit Microsystems is vendor-neutral on paper, it virtually stopped making AMD Radeon-based products.

Palit Microsystems runs two major brands, Palit, and Gainward, which target different global markets, and are seldom found in the same market. PC Partner, on the other hand, runs Sapphire, which focuses on AMD Radeon products, and ZOTAC, focusing on NVIDIA GeForce. Both Palit Microsystems and PC Partners also contract-manufacture graphics cards for other companies. With the surge of Palit Microsystems and PC Partner, ASUSTek is pushed down to the third place in global market-share, followed by MSI and GIGABYTE.

Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues posted year-over-year growth of 3.3%, totaling just over $5.9 billion, in the third quarter of 2012 (3Q12), according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker. For the quarter, the total disk storage systems market posted just under $7.9 billion in revenues, representing 3.7% growth from the prior year's third quarter. Total disk storage systems capacity shipped reach 7,104 petabytes, growing 24.4% year over year.

"The external disk storage system market continues to exhibit steady growth, posting solid third quarter factory revenues of just over $5.9 billion," said Liz Conner, senior research analyst, Storage Systems. "End users continue to invest in storage infrastructures despite persistent concerns surrounding global and regional economies. Helping to drive the worldwide market in the third quarter was the double-digit growth in multi-protocol storage architecture and strong demand for upper mid-range and high-end storage."

The combined consumer and enterprise worldwide wireless local area network (WLAN) market segments experienced year-over-year growth of 14.6% in the third quarter of 2012 (3Q12). According to the 3Q12 results published in the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly WLAN Tracker, the enterprise segment continued on its path of torrid growth with an impressive 24.0% increase over the same period last year. This was the sixth quarter in a row with annual growth in access of 20%.

"While the growth in the third quarter was marginally slower than what we have seen in the last couple of years, it was still a stellar quarter by any standards for the enterprise WLAN market," said Rohit Mehra, Vice President, Network Infrastructure, at IDC. "Almost all major and emerging vendors contributed to this strong performance of the enterprise WLAN segment in the third quarter, a period that was highlighted by two significant events: the IPO of Ruckus Wireless, and the acquisition of cloud-networking start-up Meraki by market leader Cisco."

Despite losing in market share to Intel, AMD has reason to cheer as its APU gambit is beginning to pay off. According to the latest architecture- and core count-specific sales figures for AMD given out by Mercury Research detailing Q3-2013 in context of two preceding quarters, APUs make for nearly 75% of AMD's processor sales, and the company's recently-launched "Trinity" line of desktop and mobile APUs are off to a flying start.

The most popular chips in AMD's stable are its "Bobcat" Zacate series low-power APUs, which are being built into entry-level computing devices such as netbooks, nettops, and all-in-one desktops. The chips make up 39 percent of AMD's sales in Q3, followed by another APU line, the A-Series "Trinity", which is available in desktop and mobile variants, offers a combination of a fast integrated graphics processor with up to four CPU cores, and makes up 26.1 percent of AMD's sales. AMD's A-Series "Llano" can still be bought in the market, and makes up 7.4 percent of AMD's sales in Q3.

According to DRAMeXchange, a research division of TrendForce, as PC shipments are continually adjusted downwards and yearly growth has decreased by 5% YoY, demand for the peak season is not as strong as expected and the oversupply situation continues to worsen. As a result, contract price for 2 Gb chips fell by 22.5% in the third quarter, from US$1.11 in July to US$0.86 in September. Server and mobile DRAM are also showing falling price trends, resulting in an 8.5% drop in the value of the DRAM industry compared to the previous quarter; DRAM suppliers' revenues are falling across the board. However, looking at third quarter demand, with strong shipments for mobile devices like smartphones and tablet PCs, mobile DRAM accounted for 25% of total DRAM output, a significant increase from less than 20% in the second quarter. Consequently, market share is on the rise for memory makers with higher mobile DRAM ratios, like Samsung and Elpida. For the DRAM industry, improving core competitiveness lies in proper product adjustment, the key to profitability with such bleak market conditions.

Market research firm TrendForce released NAND flash shipment figures for 3Q 2012. The global NAND flash market is valued at US $4.626 billion, a healthy 6.6% growth over the previous quarter. A TrendForce DRAMeXchange report provided a break-down of shipments of NAND flash by manufacturers. Leading the pack is Samsung, with 41.2% market-share, registering a 1.8% QoQ growth. Trailing behind is Toshiba, with 24.7% market share, and a significant 12.9% QoQ growth. In September, Toshiba cut prices and scaled up production, which may have contributed to the growth. Micron holds 14.4% of the market with 2.8% growth, SK Hynix 11.6% with 6.4% growth (the company began mass-production of SSD-grade NAND flash this quarter), and Intel with 7.6% of the market-share, growing at 19.7%. Bear in mind, these numbers represent NAND flash components used not only in SSDs, but also USB flash drives, memory cards, etc.

MarketResearch.com has announced the addition of "Ultrabooks Market to 2016 -- Financial and Technological Support from Intel Corporation Coupled with Demand from Business Users Segment Will Drive Growth," to their collection of market reports.

GBI Research's new report, "Ultrabooks Market to 2016 -- Financial and Technological Support from Intel Corporation Coupled with Demand from Business Users Segment Will Drive Growth," provides key information and analysis on the Ultrabooks market. The Ultrabook is defined by Intel as being any notebook using Intel processors and meeting certain chip manufacturer specifications. However, in general the term is being used for notebooks that are lightweight (less than four pounds), ultra-thin (less than 2.1cm thick) and have screen sizes varying from 13 to 15 inches. GBI Research expects the global Ultrabooks market to reach $75.8 billion in revenue in 2016, from just $1.3 billion in 2011, growing at a CAGR of 69.2% during 2012-2016.

Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, announced estimated mobile devices graphics chip shipments for the first half of 2012. Mobile devices include smartphones, tablets, and game consoles.

The market for portable devices (mobile devices that we can carry) continues to soar in spite of economic difficulties and general uncertainty. Although portable devices are not necessarily replacing the PC, they are outselling the PC. All of these devices have a graphics processor (GPU) integrated in the device's system on a chip (SoC) application processor.

The NAND and NOR flash memory market landscape is shifting rapidly, with increasingly sophisticated mobile handsets playing a leading role in driving industry trends and determining which suppliers will be successful, according to an IHS iSuppli Mobile & Embedded Market Tracker Report from information and analytics provider IHS.

Revenue for the flash memory market by year-end is projected to decline to $24.3 billion, down 4.7 percent from 25.5 percent from $25.5 billion in 2011. The NAND segment this year will account for $20.8 billion and the NOR sector will make up the remainder at $3.5 billion.

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 87.5 million units in the third quarter of 2012, a decline of 8.3 percent compared with the third quarter of 2011, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc.

"A continuing slowdown in consumer PC shipments played a big part in the overall PC market decline," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. "The third quarter was also a transitional quarter before Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system release, so shipments were less vigorous as vendors and their channel partners liquidated inventory.

At HP's (NYSE: HPQ) annual Securities Analyst Meeting, being held today in San Francisco, the company's leadership is mapping out strategic priorities for the future and providing a detailed multiyear roadmap to turn the company around.

During her keynote, HP's president and chief executive officer Meg Whitman outlined progress made over the past year to stabilize the business and lay the foundation for a multiyear turnaround. The operating and organizational models have been integrated, centralized and streamlined, and a talented executive team is in place to execute the strategy.

Apparently, Toshiba's strategy of inflating NAND flash pricing by cutting down production by 30 percent, stimulating similar reductions across the industry, backfired. Taking advantage of Toshiba's production cuts, Micron Technology ramped up its production, gaining market share. The Idahoan company's increased market share at Toshiba's expense ensured that SSD makers with Toshiba NAND flash create variants of their products with Micron's chips. Toshiba's latest move, according to a TweakTown report, is to scale its NAND flash production back up, and cut NAND flash prices down by 20 - 25 percent. Such a price-cut could result in further SSD price-cuts across the board, as the industry would end up with large inventories of Toshiba- and Micron-branded NAND flash chips.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES today announced that Joe Chen has been appointed as the new Vice President of Sales for the Greater China region, joining the company from Marvell Technology, a leading provider of storage, communications and consumer semiconductor products.

"Joe will play a key role in driving our sales strategy in the growing markets in Asia"
In this role, Chen will be responsible for sales in the Greater China region consisting of China and Taiwan. He will build and mentor a top-quality regional sales team, and grow and maintain successful and trusted partnerships with existing and new customers to expand the company's market share in Asia. Chen reports to Chuck Fox, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales at GLOBALFOUNDRIES.

Lenovo Group, the world's second largest and fastest growing major PC company today announced the acquisition of the CCE business. CCE is widely known in Brazil as a leader in PCs and consumer electronics. The acquisition significantly expands Lenovo's presence in the world's third-largest PC market, with a manufacturing presence and a full suite of consumer products across all four screens - PC, tablet, smart phone and TV - that define the new "PC+ era". At the same time, it aligns profitable, fast-growing, consumer focused CCE with a global partner that will boost its overall strength, innovation capability, product portfolio and supply chain resources.

Brazilian customers will clearly and immediately benefit from better, even more competitively priced products, coming faster to market from a provider with an excellent combined heritage: a strong understanding of the Brazilian consumer on one hand and a deep innovation capability, unmatched legacy of quality, and global supply chain on the other.

Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, announced estimated graphics Add-in Board (AIB) shipments and sales' market share for Q2'12. The JPR AIB Report tracks computer graphics boards, which carry discrete graphics chips. They are used in desktop PCs, workstations, servers, and other devices such as scientific instruments. They may be sold as after-market products directly to customers or they may be factory installed. In all cases, they represent the higher-end of the graphics industry as discrete chips rather than integrated processors.

We found that AIB shipments during Q1 2012 did behave according to past years with regard to seasonality, but in unit shipments was lower on a year-to-year comparison and on a quarter-to-quarter comparison for the quarter. Overall, for the AIB, and PC market in general, 2012 has been, and is forecasted to have a decline in shipments due to the popularity of notebooks and worldwide economic depression.

Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, announced estimated graphics chip shipments and suppliers' market share for Q2'12.

The news was good, for most. Intel had gains in both desktop (13.6%) and notebook (3.8%) led mostly by Sandy Bridge. Nvidia gained in the notebook discrete segment (6%), and AMD saw gains in the discrete desktop category (2.5%).