EETimes has a report on the leading players of the graphics market and the results are somewhat surprising for people who are not familiar with all the players. While most of us would think of NVIDIA and ATI as the two titans of graphics, many don’t realize that Intel is actually the largest supplier of graphics components. Why is this so? The key is the motherboard chipsets where Intel can integrate graphics directly on board. I worked at Intel over 7 years ago when Intel was making its third try at entering the graphics market. At the time, the company was coming out with the Intel 740 AGP card and it was clear to Intel that developing graphics cards was NOT the way to go. However, an initiative started whereby Intel would integrate the graphics components directly with the motherboard chipsets for their processors. The reasoning? Reduce system costs by putting as much as possible on a single board. Worked for audio and networking; why not for graphics? Indeed here we are seven years later and Intel is the largest supplier. They’re not the fastest by any means but they’re a good option when you want a simple system that just works.
Here are the top four players and their market share as of Q4 of 2004:
Intel: 40.2 %
ATI: 27.6 %
NVIDIA: 18.6 %
VIA: 7.3 %
Thanks to Lou for finding me this link.
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