IDC Data Shows Nvidia's China Shipments Fell 44 Percent as Huawei Nearly Doubled
IDC's fresh figures for the first half of 2026 show a Chinese market in transition: Huawei's shipments have nearly doubled, non-GPU accelerators have for the first time overtaken GPUs by volume — and all of the numbers rest on a single secondary source.
Nvidia's share of China's data center AI semiconductor market fell to 34 percent in the first half of 2026, according to the research firm IDC. Shipments to China came in at 678,000 units, a decline of 44 percent from the same period a year earlier. Huawei is close behind: the company's AI chip shipments rose from over 300,000 units the year before to 572,000 units, equivalent to 28 percent of the total market.
The figures are presented in an IDC report, but here they are known only through a secondary write-up from BigGo Finance — the underlying IDC report itself is not available. That is worth keeping in mind when interpreting the conclusions.
Export controls and Chinese approval
Two policy forces are cited as the driving factors. On one side, US export controls limit which chips Nvidia can legally sell to China. On the other, Beijing has promoted Chinese alternatives, while Chinese companies must now obtain approval before importing Nvidia chips that comply with the regulations. The combination squeezes the market from two directions — and, according to the write-up, it is the Chinese vendors who benefit.
At the same time, BigGo Finance notes that IDC has not disclosed which Nvidia products are included in the 34 percent figure. Without that overview, it is difficult to say precisely how the share should be understood, or how much of the decline stems from the export controls themselves.
Non-GPU chips take over the volume
The most striking change in IDC's data may not be the Nvidia–Huawei race, but the chip type itself. According to the write-up, non-GPU AI chips in China grew by nearly 80 percent, to 1.016 million units in the first half of the year — and for the first time overtook GPUs in volume. GPU shipments came in at 991,000 units, down 26 percent.
Among the Chinese vendors, T-Head, Alibaba's semiconductor design division, is cited at 7 percent, followed by Cambricon at 5 percent, Baidu-affiliated Kunlunxin at 4 percent and Hygon at 3 percent. Of the eleven Chinese chipmakers IDC tracks, nine increased their shipments.
In total, IDC says 2.008 million AI chips were shipped in China in the first half of 2026. For the full year, IDC forecasts that total shipments will rise 19 percent, while GPU shipments alone will fall 9 percent. In other words: growth in the Chinese AI chip market is expected to come entirely from non-GPU architectures.
From chip performance to system performance
According to the write-up, IDC points to a larger shift in what determines competitiveness: the emphasis is moving from the performance of individual chips toward overall system capability — that is, how effectively the chips operate within large-scale clusters. This is a shift that in principle can move the advantage from the best single chip to the best integration of chips, networking and software in the clusters that train and run large models.
Huang's criticism and the $50 billion estimate
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has argued that export control policy has forced US companies to cede the Chinese AI chip market — estimated at $50 billion — to Huawei. That is presented here as BigGo Finance characterizes Huang's public statements, not as a verbatim quote. Nvidia did not respond to requests for comment.
What remains uncertain
Although the figures are detailed, they rest entirely on one secondary write-up of an IDC report that is not available in its original form. Several questions remain open:
- Are Huawei's 572,000 units shipped or deployed? That is unverified, and the distinction may matter for how the market share is interpreted.
- What exactly falls within IDC's definition of "non-GPU AI chips"?
- Which Nvidia products are counted in the 34 percent? Without that overview, it is hard to say how much of the decline is due to export bans and how much to definitional choices.
- Where Huang's $50 billion estimate comes from is not stated in the write-up, and it is characterized as his argument, not a documented market size.
That does not mean the picture is false — the direction points consistently the same way, and the growth pattern among the Chinese vendors (nine of eleven up) supports the same signal. But it does mean that 34 versus 28 percent, the "first time" crossover to non-GPU chips, and the 19 percent growth forecast should be read as one source's figures for one half-year, not as an established fact. The market appears to have turned; the exact shape of the curve depends on confirmed numbers.