The global graphics market contracted by 0.8 percent in the first quarter of 2012. According to beancounters over at Jon Peddie, the decline was largely seasonal, but there are some other factors dragging the PC market down.

AMD managed to make the most of the lackluster quarter. The chipmaker saw huge gains in its desktop APU market, amounting to 84 percent sequentially, while shipments of notebooks APUs dropped by 2.6 percent. It is safe to assume that they will rebound in Q2 thanks to Trinity and Brazos 2.0. However, in spite of the strong showing AMD’s year-to-year shipments declined.

Speaking of declining, Nvidia led the way. The green team ended the quarter with a 15.1 percent share, down from 19.9 percent in Q1 2011. AMD’s Q1 2012 share was 25 percent, an 0.3 percent gain year on year. However, Intel emerged as the big winner, with a 58.8 share compared to last year’s 54.7. Still, Intel shed 0.3 percent sequentially.

The overall trend is not encouraging. The market swallowed up 123 million graphics chips in Q1, down from 124 million last quarter and 126 million shipped in Q1 2011. Furthermore, shipments of discrete GPUs dropped 2.7 percent sequentially and 11 percent year-on-year. Some 93 percent of all Intel non-server processors shipped feature graphics, and the same goes for 79 percent of AMD parts. Needless to say, this does not bode well for Nvidia.