Graphics card shipments increased by nearly 30% year over year in 2021

pcgamer.com:

The worst of the global GPU shortage(opens in new tab) appears to be behind us. Prices are falling(opens in new tab) in most regions, cards are actually in stock at many retailers and it appears as though the crypto mining craze has peaked.

To illustrate just how much the market exploded in 2021, a recently published report by Graphic Speak(opens in new tab) (via Tom's Hardware(opens in new tab)) suggests that $51.8 billion dollars worth of graphics cards were shipped in 2021. The number of cards sold increased by 29.5% over the number sold in 2020, and that's despite the major impacts of the pandemic and the resulting supply chain issues, worker furloughs and logistics bottlenecks. 

Normally you’d assume that greater production would have made it easier to get your hands on a card, but as we all know, that wasn’t the case. Some cards were instantly sold out or bought up by bots even at double their RRP, if not more.

The Graphics Speak data is sourced from Jon Peddie Research. It goes on to break down the Nvidia and AMD market share, stating: “AMD’s quarter-to-quarter total desktop AIB unit shipments, meanwhile, increased 12.4% and increased 35.7% from that quarter in the previous year. Nvidia’s quarter-to-quarter unit shipments increased 0.5% and increased 27.7% from Q4’20. Nvidia continues to hold a dominant market share position at 77.2%”

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This shows that both AMD and Nvidia sold ship loads of cards, with AMD doing particularly well in the 4th