Discrete graphics card sales in China total 16-17 million units a year, representing over 50 percent of the global volume. While GPU sales are dropping in the rest of the world, demand from China remains stable and Colorful, Galaxy and Zotac are the leading vendors in the Chinese market. The strong performance of Colorful may pose a big threat to ASUS and Gigabyte as Colorful is trying to boost its motherboard sales via help from the graphics card business.
Colorful, which mainly focuses on the China market, is able to ship 500,000 graphics cards per month and may be able ship five million units in 2015. Galaxy's monthly output is about 400,000-450,000 units and is expected to ship close to five million units in 2015, including shipments to Europe, North America, Australia, Japan and Korea. Zotac is expected to ship about three million units in 2015, the sources noted.
Asustek shipped five million graphics cards in 2014 and expects its shipments in 2015 to stay at the same level. But the vendor is expected to be surpassed by Colorful and Galaxy since its share in the China market has not seen any growth, the sources said.
Gigabyte shipped 3.6 million graphics cards and MSI 2.9 million units in 2014, but their shipments may decline 5-10% on year in 2015 and are currently facing fierce competition from Zotac, Maxsun, Gainward and Onda, the sources pointed out.