After launching the HD 7000 series of graphics cards, AMD entered a period of several years marked by sparse new releases. Due to fierce competition from Nvidia, AMD’s discrete GPU marketshare has been on a downward trend since then. This trend was recently reversed with the launch of Polaris GPUs, moving AMD into the 20+% range. With the upcoming launch of Vega, the company is planning on trying to seize 50/50 market parity as a long term goal.
We have made very good progress I would say in the first couple of quarters this year in terms of graphics. I think it’s nice, when you look at graphics it’s both in the consumer side on the channel as well as in the OEM business and on the professional graphics market. There’s a large opportunity. I think we’ve gained a good amount of share over the last few quarters, we’re going to continue and consistently drive [share growth]. We believe that there’s no reason we can’t be at 50/50 share overtime, but it will certainly take some time to get there. The key thing is enhancing our relationships with customers, because we believe that it’s also important to have a very sticky business going forward.
[…]I think the market is on-fire. It’s a great market. Our strategy in GPUs is to play across the entire market. We think we have the IP, the capability, the talent to do that. We started with gaining share in consumer and that’s why Polaris is so important for us this year. As we go into more of the higher-end markets with our next generation Vega architecture what you will find is the hardware is very very competitive.
With Vega, AMD is banking on the various improvements they are making as well as HBM2. Some reports have suggested it won’t merely be Polaris with HBM2 but with other major architectural changes to improve efficiency and performance. If AMD is able to bring stellar products to market and execute well, I don’t see why they won’t be at 50/50 parity within a year or two. After all, they did hold around 40% marketshare for the better part of a decade before.
