The computer add-in board (AIB) (carrying discrete graphics chips, representing the higher end of the graphics industry) market followed seasonal trends in Q4’14, says Jon Peddie Research, falling 0.68% QoQ and 17.52% YoY. These numbers compare unfavourably to the desktop PC market, which fell 3.53% QoQ and 0.72% YoY.
In spite of the overall decline – which was partly because of tablet PCs and embedded graphics – PC gaming continued to build momentum and was a bright spot in the AIB market. However, the attach rate of AIBs continued to fall – from a high of 63% in Q1’08 to 36% in Q4’14.
In general, AIB shipments behaved as expected according to past years, although above the 10-year average. Shipments were down 0.68% QoQ, to 12.4 million units, while the 10-year average is 3.22%.
AMD’s QoQ desktop AIB shipments fell 16%; Nvidia’s were up 5.5% (with a dominant 76% market share); and other suppliers results were flat-to-declining.
There are now just four GPU suppliers in the AIB market, primarily Nvidia and AMD. There are 48 AIB suppliers in total (AIB OEM customers of the GPU suppliers).
| AIB Market Shares | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Supplier | Q4’14 Share | Q3’14 Share | Q4’13 Share |
| AMD | 24.0% | 28.4% | 35.0% |
| Matrox | 0.0% | 0.1% | 0.1% |
| Nvidia | 76.0% | 71.5% | 64.9% |
| S3 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Source: JPR | |||
