Nvidia, in the first quarter of 2011, achieved a share of 59.4% in the desktop GPU market with AMD scored a share of 40.6%, according to sources from graphics card players citing figures from Mercury Research; however, Nvidia's market share performance of 42% in the notebook GPU market, dragged down the company's overall performance to only 51%, winning slightly by 2pp against AMD.
Facing strong competition from Intel and AMD, Nvidia has been gradually phasing out of the chipset market and this has relatively affected its performance in integrated graphics processor (IGP) chipsets. Since Nvidia does not have authorization tor use x86 processors and chipsets, the company saw its market share dropping every quarter in the notebook GPU market in 2010. Although Nvidia was able to gain back some share in the first quarter of 2011, the company is still unlikely to have a chance to surpass AMD, the sources noted.
The sources pointed out that Nvidia's Fermi graphics cards for the desktop GPU market are the main driver for Nvidia to keep its strong market share and the company's strategy of pushing CUDA technology as well as DirectCompute 11 and OpenCL 1.1 is expected to be the key for whether the company will be able to maintain its share in the future.
| Mercury Research: GPU market share by maker, 1Q10-1Q11 |
| | Nvidia | AMD |
| 1Q10 NB (notebooks) | 50% | 50% |
| 1Q10 DT (desktops) | 65% | 35% |
| Total | 58% | 42% |
| 2Q10 NB | 43.7% | 56.3% |
| 2Q10 DT | 55.2% | 44.5% |
| Total | 51.2% | 48.8% |
| 3Q10 NB | 38% | 63% |
| 3Q10 DT | 59% | 41% |
| Total | 50% | 50% |
| 4Q10 NB | 38% | 62% |
| 4Q10 DT | 61% | 39% |
| Total | 51% | 49% |
| 1Q11 NB | 42% | 58% |
| 1Q11 DT | 59.4% | 40.6% |
| Total | 51% | 49% |
Source: Mercury Research and industry sources, compiled by Digitimes, May 2011