Nvidia shared its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2021, and while the company’s GPUs were on an extremely low offer, it did not appear to affect how much money the company made. In fact, she reported a record $ 5 billion in revenue, which is 61 percent year on year. What’s more impressive is that Nvidia expects to make another $ 5 billion in revenue during the first quarter of 2022.
This positive outlook is surprising, given that the first quarter is generally slower than the other quarters, even for the largest technology companies, as it follows the rush of people buying many products during the holiday period. It is generally a slower period for product launches in technology and games. Also, let’s not forget that the GPU shortage is still going on. Nvidia reiterated that the tight supply will continue over the next quarter, but this is probably considered in its optimistic revenue forecast.
Nvidia says it expects most of the $ 5 billion revenue estimate in the first quarter of 2022 to come from the gaming market, despite being the segment that is having the most difficulty servicing. Since the launch of the RTX 30 series desktop graphics cards, leading with the RTX 3080, 3090, 3070, and followed by other products, Nvidia has not been able to meet demand – although it is not the only company affected. AMD has also struggled, perhaps more than Nvidia, to maintain a stable stock of video cards for retailers. My colleague Sean Hollister received comments from both companies about the shortage. The ongoing pandemic certainly played a role in this, and possibly the scarcity of semiconductor chips.
Nvidia recently announced that it is trying to make it easier for gamers, not cryptocurrency miners, to get its RTX 3060 desktop video card that will launch tomorrow for $ 329. It is doing so by implementing GPU driver software that it weakens its Ethereum farm capacity in half, in an effort to discourage crypto miners from buying it. It will also introduce its dedicated mining processor CMP in March, which Nvidia is doing to serve the mining community with the hope that they will leave more gaming GPUs for players to buy. Interestingly, Nvidia said during its call to investors that cryptocurrency-related sales represented a small share of its total revenue – just $ 300 million out of $ 5 billion, suggesting that miners did not play a major role in the GPU shortage.