The graphics chip market has experienced an incredible trend in the past few quarters, from low to high, and then from the high to the bottom. The driving force of this market trend comes from the cryptocurrency market.
In 2017, the cryptocurrency market is arguably the main source of growth of NVIDIA's graphics chips. NVIDIA said in March that the company needed to increase production to ensure that cryptocurrency players and the gaming market had enough graphics cards. Having said that, in fact, NVIDIA has been trying to reduce the impact of falling cryptocurrency business demand on it. Previously, TSMC has also clearly stated that the cryptocurrency market is less than expected and will cut its full-year performance forecast.
In the second quarter earnings report released by NVIDIA, the cryptocurrency mining revenue in June dropped by 94%. Specifically, the decline in mining revenue led to a 54% drop in total OEM business revenue and a 70% decrease from the previous year.
At the same time, NVIDIA also said that although in the past few quarters, NVIDIA has gained a strong growth driver from the cryptocurrency market, and once thought that the market will make a great contribution to the company, but according to the current situation, the contribution of this business to NVIDIA in the second half will not be so important.
According to the industry chain research, Bitmain(biggest bitcoin mining machine producer) shipped 2 million mining machines in January, but shipments in March have been halved and further declined in the second quarter.
NVIDIA said that the current cryptocurrency market is completely different from three years ago. Even the new graphics cards, sold at current prices, have little meaning in this market. Therefore, NVIDIA predicts that the future cryptocurrency market will have zero driving force for the graphics chip market.
