14 DAY TRIAL // According to our previous coverage on the matter of graphics cards sales in Asia, we noticed the general improvement of living standards in China, something that people with increased revenues reflected in their hardware acquisitions.
Apparently, hardware consumption started to move from lower-end or entry-level devices to more luxurious and expensive hardware. In this regard, consumers in China shifted from buying cheaper Android to getting more expensive Apple tablets and smartphones. PC hardware-wise, graphics cards reflected this move by registering much better sales in the higher-end spectrum of the GPU offer than the mid and lower end.
This happens, however, even if PC sales are generally at an all-time low. The reason why the mid- and entry-level graphics adapters are dropping in sales is because integrated solutions are dominating the market offering very similar performance values to the low-end graphics cards. Back in the day, integrated graphics cards were completely useless in most applications, but now their power has increased and they begin to be a viable substitute for cheap ones.
NVIDIA claims it has great sales despite PC sales crisis
According to 4Gamer.net web-site, Jeff Fisher, senior vice president at NVIDIA, told the Japanese website that, although this is happening, the new-generation game consoles do not threat sales of discrete graphics adapters but actually help to popularize games and GeForce GPUs.
Since top-end GPUs used to cost $499 just a few years ago and now the first and second most expensive graphics cards, the NVIDIA Titan X and GTX 980Ti, cost about $649 and $999, people are claiming that there has been an artificial price increase in computer parts.
Jeff Fisher defended this by saying that the Titan X isn't meant for gamers but for high-performance computing enthusiasts. Although Quadro cards already do that, and some more, it's clear that NVIDIA sees Titan X as more of an extremely luxurious card than just a pure computing performer.
There's no surprise that NVIDIA claims that its top graphics cards are selling well, when they are already dominating the world market by 80 per cent.