ATI, graphics business unit of Advanced Micro Devices, managed to maintain its lead on the market of discrete graphics adapters in Q3 2010, according to data recently released by Mercury Research. Even though both ATI and Nvidia Corp. enjoyed increase in sales of desktop standalone graphics cards, shipments of mobile discrete graphics chips collapsed.

The overall market of standalone graphics adapters - for desktops and notebooks - totaled 33.68 million units and was down 3.34% quarter-over-quarter in Q3 2010, according to Mercury. This is a big surprise as traditionally sales of graphics cards peak in the third quarter. Another interesting aspect of Q3 2010 was the fact that sales of mobile GPUs dropped below shipments of desktop graphics processors.

The Q3 2010 was clearly a good quarter for desktop standalone graphics adapters: the market grew 20% quarter-over-quarter to 18.7 million units. Given that during the quarter Nvidia Corp. released its GeForce GTS 450 and GTX 460 graphics boards and AMD reconsidered pricing of its offerings, it is not a huge surprise that the market got a boost. Since the Santa Clara, California-based designer of graphics processing units (GPUs) released more new products than competitor, its shipments increased by almost one third, whereas Sunnyvale, California-based designer of chips only experienced 11.2% growth, based on data recently revealed by Mercury Research.

On the other hand, due to weakening demand towards consumer-class notebooks in well-developed countries, shipments of GPUs for mobile computers collapsed by 22.77% sequentially. Given that Nvidia's mobile GPU lineup is not as competitive as AMD's, its appropriate sales dropped by whopping 33%. Shipments of ATI Mobility Radeon HD declined by 15%. Even though the situation on the market of mobile graphics chips remains uncertain, AMD is celebrating market share win despite of dropping sales.

"For the second consecutive quarter AMD is the market share leader in discrete graphics. In addition, AMD made further inroads in notebook discrete, capturing an additional 5.6% share points and surpassing 60% share in notebook discrete.  This is a tremendous undertaking and demonstrates the strength of the DirectX 11 notebook discrete graphics product stack," a statement by AMD reads.

Please note that Mercury Research market data was found on the Internet. While it seems to be accurate, some of the numbers in this news-story are approximates.

Tags: ATI, AMD, Nvidia, Radeon, Geforce, Evergreen, Fermi, Business, mercury research