According to Mercury Research, AMD has managed to grab some market share from Nvidia over the past year. This comes as no surprise, as Nvidia was forced to delay its Fermi architecture by several months and even after the new cards launched they were plagued by poor availability.

In the discrete market AMD's graphics business gained 8.2 share points year-on-year, for a total 42.1 percent share in Q1. As you might have guessed, Nvidia lost 8.2 share points over the same period. In mobile graphics, AMD gained 9 percent and ended up with a 49.7 percent share.

In overall graphics sales, including the integrated GPU market which is dominated by Intel, AMD gained 2.8 percent. Nvidia dipped 4.8 percent and it can only hope that sales will pick up with the introduction of new DirectX 11 parts. It's quite clear AMD will keep breathing down Nvidia's neck over the next few quarters.

Updated: However, Nvidia sees no reason for concern, as the numbers stayed flat quarter-on-quarter, so there's a silver lining for the green team at the end of the day. In fact, Nvidia informed us that it managed to regain a bit of ground over the past quarter. Sequentially, Nvidia's mobile GPU shipments increased, but desktop sales were stagnant. Overall the outfit is upbeat about its prospects in 2010 and it will be interesting to see how things will develop over the next couple of quarters, as more affordable Nvidia DX11 parts hit the channel.