Nvidia Corporation (NVDA) Is Winning the Graphics Card War
Nvidia Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) investors this week got their first glimpse of the new Turing graphics processing units that will be rolling out in the second half of the year. Analysts say Turing will be a game-changer for Nvidia, and the latest Steam PC gamer survey indicates Nvidia is gaining market share in the high-growth graphics card market.
Even ahead of the launch of the three new Nvidia Turing graphics cards, Steam data suggests Nvidia is dominating the high-end PC gaming market. Steam's July hardware survey of millions of PC gamers revealed that 76.4 percent use Nvidia graphics cards. Nvidia's market share is up from just 56.7 percent in 2016 and now dwarfs the remaining market shares of the competition. Nvidia's GTX 1060 (12.9 percent share), GTX 1050 Ti (9.9 percent share) and GTX 1050 (6.4 percent share) are the three most popular graphics cards among gamers.
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In the past two years, Advanced Micro Devices ( AMD) market share has dropped from 25.1 percent to 13.9 percent. Over the same period, Intel Corp. ( INTC) market share has fallen from 17.8 percent to just 9.6 percent.
According to analysts, the new Turing-based cards, which feature ray tracing capabilities, will keep Nvidia's market share trending in the right direction
Stifel analyst Kevin Cassidy says the new Turing GPUs are a significant upgrade to Nvidia's current family of products, and they will help Nvidia maintain its position as the gold standard of high-end gaming hardware. Cassidy is convinced the Turing cards will trigger a widespread upgrade cycle for the new GPUs.
"We view Nvidia as the market leader in high-end GPUs, which should continue to benefit from growth in the gaming market and increased [average sales prices] due to significant generational improvements," Cassidy says.
According to Loup Ventures analyst Gene Munster, the new Nvidia Turing cards are the "holy grail of computer graphics." The GeForce RTX product line of three graphics cards will price between $499 and $999 and will provide a much more realistic experience for gamers and open up new possibilities for developers.
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"Hardware and software innovations will increasingly save developers time and money and will improve the gaming experience," Munster says.
Stifel has a "hold" rating and $250 price target for NVDA stock.
Wayne Duggan is a freelance investment strategy reporter with a focus on energy and emerging market stocks. He has a degree in brain and cognitive sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and specializes in the psychological challenges of investing. He is a senior financial market reporter for Benzinga and has contributed financial market analysis to Motley Fool, Seeking Alpha and InvestorPlace. He is also the author of the book "Beating Wall Street With Common Sense," which focuses on the practical strategies he has used to outperform the stock market. You can follow him on Twitter @DugganSense, check out his latest content at tradingcommonsense.com or email him at wpd@tradingcommonsense.com.
