Discrete GPU marketshare: AMD vs NVIDIA from 2002 to 2016

It's been some time since I've last seen a long-term chart of the marketshare of AMD and NVIDIA in the discrete GPU market but German tech site 3DCenter just went through the effort of creating an updated chart that spans from Q4 2002 to Q3 2016. The chart is based on data from both Jon Peddie Research and Mercury Research, so it differs a bit from the figures we published last week.

Keep in mind that last decade the market consisted of more players than just AMD and NVIDIA. Ten years ago you had a number of other players like Matrox, VIA, SiS, XGI, and 3D Labs, but all of them are now lost to the seas of time or are have been reduced to small niche players.

One interesting observation here is that AMD's current marketshare of 27 percent is almost exactly the same marketshare as the 26 percent held by ATI in late 2002. NVIDIA on the other hand now holds 73 percent of the market, versus 65 percent in late 2002.

Except for a brief period of time in 2004-2005, NVIDIA always had the upperhand in the discrete GPU market. ATI's marketshare peaked at a level of 58 percent in Q2 2004 and has rarely seen levels above 40 percent since AMD bought the Canadian graphics chip designer for $5.6 billion in 2006.

Since the takeover, AMD's GPU marketshare typically moved in a narrow band between 35 percent and 40 percent but in 2014 the company's sales started crashing hard. AMD's GPU marketshare reached a low of 20 percent in Q3 2015 and over the past year they've managed to recover to a level of 27 percent.