According to Jon Peddie Research, the recovery of the PC market in 2023 continued into the fourth quarter, with GPU and CPU shipments up 20% and 24%, respectively, year-over-year. The quarter-over-quarter increase, while not as significant as in Q3, was still impressive, with GPUs up 6% and CPUs up 9%. The market is back to growing, but it is still relatively weak.
The 2023 PC market ended the slump of 2021 and 2022, with GPU shipments at the start of the year likely to be the lowest on record. However, strong quarterly growth for the remainder of the year significantly boosted sales of GPUs and CPUs. Jon Peddie Research noted that while GPU growth is usually flat in Q3 to Q4, this time it was up 6%, which could signal a strong recovery.
Obviously, the GPU market is still down sharply from its COVID-affected highs in 2020, but shipments in 2023 are at historically low levels even compared to the 2010s. From 2013 to 2019, Q4 shipments were at least 90 million units, but in 2023, Q4 did not even break through 80 million units.
In addition, GPU shipment data includes a wide range of graphics cards: discrete graphics for desktops and laptops, as well as integrated graphics. While desktop graphics card shipments in the fourth quarter were up nearly 7% from the third quarter, desktop GPU shipments were actually down 1% year-over-year. GPU shipments grew in laptops, up a massive 32% year-over-year.
Most laptop graphics cards undoubtedly include Intel integrated graphics, which is probably why Intel's graphics market share has risen by 28%, while AMD and NVIDIA are down about 14%。It's unclear if Intel has seen significant growth as a result of its efforts with Meteor Lake and AI PCs, but these higher shipments are likely due to Meteor Lake's previous chips. After all, Meteor Lake was launched just before the end of the year, while Intel had a higher market share of 68% in the second quarter.
The recovery in CPU shipments was even more impressive, up 9% quarter-on-quarter and 24% year-over-year. Jon Peddie Research didn't provide any data specific to AMD and Intel CPUs, but Mercury Research said AMD performed very well in 2023, although its Q4 performance was about the same as Q3.
Despite the very positive results in the PC market, Jon Peddie Research warns that "happy days may not have quite come yet." It is also a historical fact that the results in the first quarter of this year are expected to be lower than in the fourth quarter of last year. Of course, many companies expect AI PCs to change everything, and maybe that is, but the research firm says AI PC features "probably won't make their way into mainstream daily use until the end of this year at the earliest."
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