Although sales of PCs remained weak in Q2 2023, things weren't all bad. While most PC makers were busy selling off remaining inventory, they increased purchases of CPUs and other components. As a result, while shipments of processors and graphics processing units (GPUs) for PCs declined in Q2 year-over-year, they were up slightly quarter-over-quarter, according to Jon Peddie Research .

The industry shipped 61.6 million graphics processing units for all platforms in Q2 2022, a decline of 27% year-over-year, but an increase of 11.6% quarter-over-quarter, JPR reports. When it comes to discrete and integrated desktop GPUs, their sales declined by 36%, whereas shipments of GPUs for notebooks decreased by 23%. Meanwhile, a quarter-to-quarter increase in GPU shipments may indicate growing demand and depleted old inventory.

Shipments of discrete desktop graphics cards totaled around 6.48 million units, up from 6.3 million units in the first quarter, but down significantly from 10.37 million units in Q2 2022, based on the numbers by Jon Peddie Research.

When it comes to market share, Intel continued to dominate the GPU market with a 68% share as it commands shipments of client CPUs with integrated graphics, and its shipments rose 11.7% sequentially. Nvidia came in a distant second with an 18% share, as it only supplies discrete GPUs these days. Due to the ramp of its GeForce RTX 40-series product family, Nvidia's shipments were up 7.5% QoQ. As for AMD, it commanded a 14% share of the market and its shipments increased by 22.9% from the previous quarter.

When it comes to GPU shipments, the second quarter is usually worse than the first quarter, but that was not the case in Q2 2023. JPR says the majority of semiconductor companies should see an average growth of 9.8% for the upcoming quarter. In contrast, their guidance for the previous quarter was an overly optimistic 15.3%.