Graphics chip vendor NVIDIA saw its share price rise overnight after a conference call yesterday evening in which it discussed its third quarter results with analysts. The company says it took in a massive $1.07billion in the three months to October 30th, beating analysts expectations by a small margin.
While a lot of the talk in the call was about the company's booming tablet processor business, where it's Tegra 2 and forthcoming Tegra 3 dominate Android manufacturers' designed, desktop hardware sales were above expectations. Notebook graphics sales were – surprisingly – down but the company says that thanks to Battlefield 3, Call of Duty: MW3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic (funny they didn't mention Skyrim...), there's been an increase in demand from gamers for upgrades over and above the seasonal norm.
Of course, it also helps that a lot of new PCs were sold to first time buyers in China and other emerging markets, but things are looking good for a company which many had thought would be threatened by the ubiquity of hybrid CPU/GPUs. Interim Chief Financial Officer Karen Burns made a point of the fact that growth in discrete card sales has more than compensated for loss of business in integrated chips.
With rumours starting to appear that the company is hoping to have it's next GeForce revision – codenamed Kepler – in shops in time for Christmas it could be a very happy new year for executive bonuses in Santa Clara.
