Gigabyte sees 20 percent drop in GPU shipments in Q2 2018

The slowndown of the cryptocurrency market is having a major impact on video card sales. Not that long ago, demand significantly outstripped supply, but that's no longer the situation we're currently in. DigiTimes reports Gigabyte Technology is seeing a 20 percent sequential drop in video card sales this quarter, with the average selling price (ASP) dropping about 10 percent.

Gigabyte held an investors conference yesterday, and said it expects to ship 1 million video cards this quarter, down from 1.2 million in Q1 2018.

As it remains unclear as to when Nvidia will release its new GPU platform in the second half of 2018, Gigabyte can hardly assess its shipment momentum in the third and fourth quarters. Nevertheless, the firm still expects its annual earnings from graphic cards for 2018 to be higher than that a year earlier, bolstered by the much higher corresponding profits scored in the first half of the year than in 2017.

Video card sales made up 49 percent of Gigabyte's revenue in Q1 2018, compared to 36 percent for motherboards and 15 percent for servers.

Gigabyte's motherboard sales are expected to hit the 12-13 million range this year, somewhat similar to 2017. The firm had hoped for 10 percent annual growth, but says this will now be hard to achieve due to the delay of Intel's next-gen CPUs.