NVIDIA desktop GPU marketshare hits all-time high as AMD collapses to 18%

AMD's position in the graphics card market is getting weaker every quarter, as evidenced by new marketshare data from Mercury Research that indicates AMD's GPU shipments collapsed to 18 percent while NVIDIA soared to an incredible 82 percent. NVIDIA's GPU marketshare has never been higher and we don't know when AMD's marketshare has ever been this low.

It must have been when 3dfx was still around. A long-term chart dating back to late 2013 reveals AMD/ATI's GPU marketshare typically hovered around 35-45 percent but now the company seems to be reaching new lows quarter after quarter.

Sales of discrete GPUs have been declining for years but since mid-2014 AMD's marketshare in the desktop graphics card market has fallen off a cliff:



One important thing to keep in mind is that the chart above does not filter out inventory adjustments, one-off events and other items. The chart comes from NVIDIA but its authenticity has been confirmed, it represents the actual AMD and NVIDIA GPU sell-in numbers to their partners in Q2 2015.

However, this is not the data that Mercury Research typically publishes. The market research firm reports its marketshare data as a four-quarter volume-weighted average to smooth out seasonal inventory cycles, because the inventory cycles of the companies are not aligned and this can cause large spikes or collapses in shipments.

The adjusted chart was published by KitGuru and reveals a marketshare of 23.6 percent for AMD and 76.4 percent for NVIDIA. The overall conclusion is the same though, NVIDIA's marketshare has soared since mid-2014 while AMD's marketshare fell off a cliff.