After a meteoric rise in 2017, the cryptocurrency market is suffering from a massive slow down this year. This has not only affected the crypto investors but made a massive impact on other industries as well. One such industry is the GPU manufacturing industry which saw a massive rise in demand last year.
At Computex 2018, Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of American chip manufacturing giant Nvidia, has announced that the firm will not come up with any new GPU for “a long time.”
This decision was propelled by the decreasing market demand for Nvidia GPUs especially the GeForce 10 series cards which are very popular among crypto miners and gamers. Moreover, one of its Asian OEM partners reportedly returned 300,000 units of GPUs to Nvidia which added fuel to the company’s woes.
According to various estimations, these factors clogged up Nvidia’s existing inventory, and thus the firm is hesitant to put another line of GPUs on the market before clearing the two-year-old GPUs.
“We’re working really hard to get GPU down to the marketplace for the gamers and we’re doing everything to advise retailers and system builders to serve the gamers. And so, we’re doing everything we can, but I think the most important thing is we just got to catching for supply,” Huang said.
With the crypto mining rush in 2017, Nvidia’s GeForce 10 GPU gained massive popularity especially among Ethereum and other altcoin miners. This eventually deprived gamers of getting their hands on these GPUs. Many reports also showed that Nvidia had inflated prices of graphics cards in the wake of growing craze in Crypto Mining .
Nvidia also predicted the coming downturn of the mining business and estimated that the reducing market demand would pull the prices of their GPUs after Q3 2018.
“Strong demand in the cryptocurrency market exceeded our expectations. Cryptocurrency mining accounted for a higher percentage of revenue than the previous quarter. Keep in mind that’s very difficult for us to quantify down to the end customers’ view. Our main focus remains on our core market, as cryptocurrency will likely remain volatile,” Colette Kress, NVIDIA’s executive Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer, added.
