Influence of crypto mining on video card market is over, according to Nvidia
Nvidia says in the presentation of its quarterly figures that crypto mining hardly contributes to sales. In the coming quarter, the manufacturer expects the influence of crypto mining to be negligible. Nvidia achieved another record turnover.
Nvidia’s chief financial officer said in a conference call on its quarterly earnings that the company had only $18 million in revenue in the past quarter attributable to crypto mining. Nvidia had revised its expectations to $100 million, much less than previous quarters, but the actual numbers were much lower.
Nvidia now expects the impact of crypto mining on the figures for the next quarter to be negligible. That also means that the company expects that its next generation video cards for gamers, based on the new Turing architecture, will not be popular with miners. Nvidia announced this week the architecture for Quadro cards for workstations, next week will probably be the presentation of the RTX 2080, a new video card for gamers.
In recent quarters, Nvidia has continued to achieve record revenues, partly because video card sales were driven by the popularity of crypto mining. In recent months, the value of many crypto coins has fallen, making mining with a video card less interesting. Asics are now also available for mining Ethereum.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang emphasizes that laptops stood out positively in the past quarter. More and more manufacturers are making thin gaming laptops with a Max-Q GPU. Huang expects that 26 different models with such a video card will be available this fall.
Furthermore, Nvidia says it started shipping the developer version of its Drive PX Pegasus computer for autonomous cars in the past quarter. It uses two Nvidia Xavier socs and two ‘next generation’ GPUs, designed for artificial intelligence. Details about those GPUs have not yet been announced.
The loss of revenue from crypto mining has no negative impact on Nvidia’s figures. In the past quarter, almost all business units achieved record turnover. There was growth in the gaming, data center and automotive segments. Turnover at the OEM part fell, according to Nvidia as a result of the changing crypto market. Total revenue was $3.1 billion, an increase of 40 percent from the comparable quarter last year. Earnings were $1.1 billion, 89 percent more than last year.