Positions of Smaller Chipset Makers Strengthening, Says Report
by Anton Shilov
10/29/2004 | 03:21 PM

Intel Corp. lost 6.7% of the chipset market to companies like VIA
Technologies, SiS and ATI, who produce chipsets, during the third quarter of
the year according to a report from Merril Lynch analyst cited by DigiTimes
web-site in Taiwan.

During the Q3 2004 Intel Corp. supplied 62.1% of all chipsets shipped
worldwide, VIA Technologies commanded 18.5% of the market, Silicon
Integrated Systems Corp. shipped 9.9% of core-logic products in Q3 2004,
while ATI Technologies and NVIDIA Corp. only occupied 4.5% and 4.2% of the
market.

According to Merrill Lynch analyst Den Heyler VIA's third-quarter 3.6%
market share gains become possible as shipments of core-logic chipsets
supporting Intel and Advanced Micro Devices microprocessors rose 17% and
67%, respectively, from the second quarter of 2004. Shares of ATI, NVIDIA
and SiS also increase 1% each in Q3. Still, chipset business of companies
like VIA, SiS and ATI, who supply the majority of their core-logic products
for PCs running Intel Pentium 4 processors, is under fire, as Intel Corp.
competes fiercely in the entry-level and mainstream chipset market segments,
which puts pricing pressure on third-party core-logic makers.

ATI, SiS and VIA supply chipsets designed for both widely available
platforms: Intel and AMD. In contrast, NVIDIA Corp. ships chipsets only for
AMD-based computers, as it does not have license to make core-logic for
Intel's central processing units. Intel only makes chipsets for its own
processors.

This quarter ATI, NVIDIA and VIA are expected to initiate commercial
shipments of the first breed of PCI Express chipsets targeted at AMD64
infrastructure. SiS and VIA are also expected to begin volume supplies of
PCI Express and DDR2 products designed for Intel's Pentium 4 processors in
weeks."

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/chipset...029152027.html

Kinda surprising considering Intel makes the overwhelming majority of
chipsets for its own platforms. I didn't think there was much of a market
for Intel chipsets for VIA, SIS, or ATI.

Yousuf Khan

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