A 3 minute presentation on Nvidia to business students. Help!

[Apocalypse23]

Here

 

[Canterwood]

Be sure to mention how their FX range sucked the big one. :|

 

[BenSkywalker]

Speaking business wise? This is an area where nVidia has humiliated everyone else in the sector driving most of them out of business.

If you start with the history of nVidia you can cover how they built the business model almost entirely on R&D- they have no fab plants, they produce no memory or boards. They acquire the useage of a third party to fab their chips, purchase memory from third parties and have OEMs produce the boards and allow them to market them at will. This leaves them without large inventory concerns, although keeping the chain flowing properly can be extremely difficult(too much supply you devalue your product, too little you reduce your potential sales). The way they have built their business reduces overhead considerably and allows them to focus their efforts on the R&D end.

You can also cover how they are a company that used a very small niche market(gamers) to gain entry into the lucrative OEM PC business. At the time they did this by offering an all in one solution that handled 3D and 2D in a way which the other companies were neglecting(the TNT was their breakthrough part, GeForce solidified them as the dominant player). During that time era ATi outsold them by an enormous margin, but nV's superior business model allowed them to crush both ATi and 3dfx who were going about things all wrong(ATi has since realized this). nV can deal directly with PC OEMs promoting their parts building business for their OEMs who can then tailor make boards to suit a particular builders needs- nV doesn't have to worry about nigh redundant SKUs while their smaller partners can land highly lucrative contracts by making a few alterations to their parts(this is how ATi handles things now also, but nV was right in assuming that this was the long term best solution).

Then there was the XBox deal. nVidia already had one console go horribly wrong for them(the Sega Saturn and the NV1- they bet on quads being the key geometric primitive instead of polygons- obviously they got that one wrong ) but they managed to utilize the R&D funding for the XBox, a bill footed by MS, to launch themselves into the chipset category which they have clearly been excelling at(another area ATi is following them in). Currently they have, in a sense, landed the ultimate contract for a business of their type- the PS3. Instead of having to worry about keeping a smooth running supply line, they simply license the IP to Sony and land themselves a cut off of every PS3 sold. Given that their R&D is their bread and butter, licensing it directly allows them to forego the relatively little overhead and risk they have left in their business model.

From a business perspective, nVidia is without a doubt second to none in their industry. Watching ATi follow them a few steps behind at all times should clearly demonstrate this(as does the corpses of their former competitors). The only element that can give them any trouble is if their R&D teams fall down.

In summation the key product points for nVidia were-

NV1(Sega Saturn- they got burned not listening to what developers wanted- lesson learned)

TNT(offered PC OEMs high performance 3D and 2D in a single board solution)

GeForce(the beginning of their dominance in the gaming market that lasted until the launch of the R300 based parts)

XBox/nForce(expanding into new markets with a subsidized R&D project for a third party)

PS3(the heavy odds on favorite to dominate the global gaming market with no supply line worries at all).

How they run their business is what has allowed them to remain the far more powerful company between them and ATi in the business sense even when their R&D department has made serious blunders(see the GeForceFX). By adapting and refocusing they were able to turn things around in one product cycle and reposition themselves as the dominant player in the broader markets(this doesn't mean they need the top performing part unless you are talking sales chart which they have had for some time).

How to summarize such things and put them in a three minute PP presentation I don't know, but if you want their attention try and look at it from the perspective of someone who knows and cares nothing about the end product except how it influences the bottom line.

 

[russki]

OP I sent you something to the email in your profile, I think you will find it useful.

 

[Apocalypse23]

great thanks for the info guys, just had a question...What do you mean by 'IP'?

Thanks

 

[RampantAndroid]

hey, russki, I find this interesting....could you shoot me that info if you wouldn't mind?

Thanks!

 

[framerateuk]

I had no idea the Saturn was nvidia based! I really had no idea that nv existed that far back, well you learn something every day!

The Riva 128 was a great card too, one of the first cards to really put up a fight against the first Voodoo board.

I had a Voodoo 2 and a TNT in a Gateway PC i bought, and i always prefered the TNT (Quake 2 looked nice in 32bit ). Voodoo 2 was unbeatable for Unreal Tournament though

 

[hans007]

you also might want to mention that , when 3dfx was in financial trouble nvidia sued them to bleed them dry , which made it so that 3dfx had no chance in hell of ever catching up. its pretty unlikely 3dfx ever would have but nvidia did kill them quite a bit faster by using a pretty ridiculousl IP lawsuit which then allowed nvidia to buy up their pretty much broke competitor at that point.

you can also say that they have used an advertising company AEG to put basically paid forum posters online, and have used the dmca to claim that redistributing an asrock Nvidia SLI unlock driver is violation of the "copyright of the word SLI" and taking it down from websites.

that and they have not always been #1 and still have a smaller market share than ati in total discrete graphics sales.

as an nvidia share holder during the xbox debacle, they lost money doing that due to the security chip problems and microsoft's demands. it is why they are not making chipsets anymore. they really did not gain anything from that either, as the chipset basically was an nforce2 igp , with the soundstorm chip. it was well most shareholders eventually figured a horrible move.

that is why they are only licensing the designs for the ps3 instead of producing the chips (they lost tons of money because microsoft wanted chips redone for some security issue and had to throw away countless chips of inventory)

some of this stuff is probably more relevant to business students than well, "video cards" in general as most of them probably do not care. you can also point out that the video card market is so cyclical that the value of nvidia stock went from lik e$5 to its present $60 in 2 years (and that it fell to $5 from about $50 in a year also before that)

 

[BenSkywalker]

you also might want to mention that , when 3dfx was in financial trouble nvidia sued them to bleed them dry

He is trying to do a business presentation, not put forth some rabid misleading rant like an obsessed fanboy.

its pretty unlikely 3dfx ever would have but nvidia did kill them quite a bit faster by using a pretty ridiculousl IP lawsuit which then allowed nvidia to buy up their pretty much broke competitor at that point.

3Dfx sued nVidia- nVidia countersued them. 3Dfx was 100% to blame for their demise. On top of that, they never were anything in the larger market. Matrox and ATi in particular were significantly larger(that is why 3Dfx bought STB and became 3dfx). 3dx was a little company ran by guys who had one good idea and not a clue about business.

as an nvidia share holder during the xbox debacle, they lost money doing that due to the security chip problems and microsoft's demands.

They were handed $250 Million up front. While the lost inventory may have effected their potential earnings for a short period of time, the XBox overall made them a ton of cash and funded their move into mobo chipsets which they have done quite well in.

that is why they are only licensing the designs for the ps3 instead of producing the chips

That was Sony's demand- not nVidia's. They would have signed on with Sony under pretty much any condition. The potential for moving an additional 100 Million units of product(albeit IP in this case) over a six year period can not be ignored.

 

[RampantAndroid]

Originally posted by: hans007
you can also say that they have used an advertising company AEG to put basically paid forum posters online, and have used the dmca to claim that redistributing an asrock Nvidia SLI unlock driver is violation of the "copyright of the word SLI" and taking it down from websites.

that and they have not always been #1 and still have a smaller market share than ati in total discrete graphics sales.

as an nvidia share holder during the xbox debacle, they lost money doing that due to the security chip problems and microsoft's demands. it is why they are not making chipsets anymore. they really did not gain anything from that either, as the chipset basically was an nforce2 igp , with the soundstorm chip. it was well most shareholders eventually figured a horrible move.

nV doesn't want people using the word SLI for a few reasons...here it'd be because of one main reason: its an unlocked driver. They didn't write it, they don't know what its doing...last thing you need is someone sueing you for release a bad driver, when it wasn't even your own driver. As for AEG, I'm sure ATi is doing the same type of thing, they just haven't been exposed in such a way (yes, both ATi and nV were mixed up in that whole driver optimization to fool the 3DMark benchmarks 2-3 years ago.)

No, they haven't always been #1, nor has either Intel of AMD...you WANT competition going...when you get a monopoly, you get the manufacturer just giving you something, and not having any real incentive to make it better, because there's no one else sitting there saying "look, their product sucks, by mine."

They do make chipsets...they have some of the best on the motherboard market...

try to give unbiased info...