[News] Graphic card makers see shipments decline by 40% in April

[StyM]

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/gra...-in-april.html

Yep, that's what happens when you do not release new graphics cards for way too long and keep relying on mining sales. Taiwan-based graphics card makers including Gigabyte Technology, Micro-Star International (MSI) and TUL are expected to see their shipments for April plunge over 40% on month.

Also, many clients have suspended taking shipments in response to drastic slowdown in demand for cryptocurrency mining machines, according to industry sources reports digitimes:

Channel distributors and larger mining farm operators have cut orders with makers of mining graphics cards and mining motherboards or asked them to suspend shipments due to the crypto mining craze waning abruptly from the beginning of April, the sources said.

Quite a few mining farm operators have even stopped purchasing graphic cards, as they are awaiting the rollout of Ethereum mining machines by China's Bitmain in the third quarter of 2018. They anticipate mining rewards to pick up gradually in the third quarter, as Bitcoin and Ethereum values may rebound following sharp declines seen in early 2018, the sources indicated.

In line with the shipment drops, gross margins for graphics card makers are expected to fall sharply to 20-25% from a high of 50% enjoyed earlier as makers and channel distributors are forced to slash prices for sales promotion. They hope the market demand can rebound in May or June. Most Taiwan makers of graphic cards saw their shipments, revenues or EPS hit new highs in 2017 and the first quarter of 2018, bolstered by raging crypto mining mania.

[Levish]

They'll manage to get some momentum back on that from all new models at least for a few months.
Hopefully by then, they'll have mining specific products, separate from graphics cards.

[bluestang]

Yeah, overpriced products tend to deter people from upgrading. Doh!

[madmaxx]

"Forced to slash prices for sales promotion" What a crock of shiite. They've been gouging the living daylights out of consumers for +2 years.

CoRps; You want me to feel sorry for you because you have to return to MSRP prices? LoLoL GFYS. Playstation and my mobile phone have completely replaced the need for a desktop PC and all its accoutrements.

[Sparky]

IMO a console and phone can never replace a desktop. Console games are OK for some things, but I prefer PC with mouse/kb. And a teeny tiny phone screen with mobile websites SUCK for getting any real work done online. I've had a smartphone for years now but I still hate and get annoyed with touchscreen keyboards. Give me a real keyboard any day. Mobile is nice for on the go stuff, but not primary use.

GPU prices are one reason why I'm still running the old hardware I am though. Far from the only reason, but it is one of them.

[madcho]

Better prices soon ?

[zanzabar]

Better prices soon ?

Since ram basically doubled in price, and we wont see mid or high end cards with 7-8Gb/s gddr5 anymore; I doubt it. A couple years ago we were looking at GDDR5 being $5-6 a GB, but now we are looking at around $8-9 a GB for the cheap stuff, and around $12-15 for the good stuff. HBM2 if you were wondering is around $20 a GB for the cheap stuff.