NVIDIA Got 60% of DirectX 9.0 GPU Market in Q2

by Anton Shilov
07/31/2003 | 08:46 AM

We managed to get some market share figures representing NVIDIA Corporation’s performance in the second calendar quarter this year based on a report. Despite of all warnings, negative predictions and lowered financial guidance, NVIDIA continued to maintain its undisputable leadership position in the Desktop Standalone and DirectX 9.0-compatible graphics processors markets.

According to what I have at hands here, NVIDIA’s market share in the Q2 was flat compared to the Q1 and achieved 64% of the Desktop Standalone GPUs market.

NVIDIA’s share among all DirectX 9.0-supporting graphics processors shipped skyrocketed to 60%, obviously, thanks to 70% share in the Value DirectX 9.0-compliant GPUs market. Even though its dollars share is lower, units share seems to be very important for the company.

NVIDIA is shown as losing share in Integrated Desktop 3D chipset market from 7% to 3%, but you should treat these numbers very carefully. The major reason was a change in accounting by Mercury Research in the integrated space. Last quarter, Mercury Research accounted for the entire 1.6 million nForce MCPs as “Integrated Desktop 3D Chipsets”, even though many of them did not have integrated graphics. This quarter - according to Mercury Research - NVIDIA shipped 1.7 million chipset units, of which they counted 600 thousands as Integrated Desktop 3D chipsets.

In the Notebook Standalone area, NVIDIA lost 9 points of share quarter-to-quarter, although NVIDIA gained 4% market share year-over-year. The company believes it will fight the market back next quarter as a result of numerous design wins of its DirectX 9.0-supporting products.  Earlier this week we reported that ATI Technologies expanded its presence in the market of discrete graphics processors for mobile computers from 51% to 59%.

As you see, NVIDIA is trying to maintain its leadership positions at any price. The indications about lower-than-expected yields of the GeForce FX 5900 and 5600 products and lowered gross-margins because of this speak for themselves: the company makes a lot of efforts and is even ready to sacrifice profitability in order to sustain the market shares. In fact, NVIDIA succeeds.

More market share numbers from Mercury Research to be published later.