Jon Peddie Research (JPR) has announced estimated graphics add-in board (AIB) shipments and sales' market share for the fourth quarter of 2010.

Overall shipments of graphics AIBs for 2010 came in at 72.8 million units compared to 75.3 million units for 2009 − a disappointing result given the enthusiastic start of the year. Shipments in the fourth quarter of 2010 did not exceed the third quarter as expected. Nvidia increased its shipments by 4.1% from the third quarter, while AMD declined 4.8% for the same period.

The AIB market is fueled at the high-end by the gamer, small in volume (around three million a year), but high in dollars (average spend for an AIB around US$300.) The volume comes from the mainstream. And GPU-compute is adding to sales on the high end. The workstation market is about the same size as the gamer, but much it is characterized by higher average selling prices (ASPs).

For the year, the AIB market hit US$17.2 billion, up 0.8% from 2009 showing a gradual rise in ASP.

The decline in shipments of desktop AIBs is due to two factors − the erosion of the low-end (value segment) by the integrated graphics processors (IGPs) and embedded CPU graphics (AMD's Fusion, and Intel's Clarkstown), and the shift in market share to notebooks and tablets. However, that is being somewhat offset by the increase in sales of AIBs for GPU-compute, and by the use of two or more AIBs in high-end gaming and workstation systems.

Source: Jon Peddie Research, compiled by Digitimes, March 2011