Nvidia has fallen behind AMD in graphics chip shipments in the second quarter, according to a report from a marketing research on Wednesday.

Mercury Research, a firm that tracks graphics chip shipments, reported that AMD's ATI graphics unit took 51 percent of discrete graphics chip market compared to Nvidia's share that was 49 percent. Last year, Nvidia had about 59 percent of the market and AMD had just under 41 percent.

The reason behind these Nvidia's weak shipments for Q2 2010 could be the delayed introduction of NVIDIA's latest graphics cards as well as the thins supplies of the GeForce GTX 470 and GTX 480 chips even after their official launch at the end of March.

Nvidia also recently lost a court battle with Rambus and Apple did not use its graphics chips for its latest desktops.

The research also showed that the total market figures for the second quarter of 2010 had Intel with a 54.3 percent share, AMD with 24.5 percent, and Nvidia with 19.8 percent.