Nvidia Q4313 results

[Idontcare]

True, though some companies are better at re-inventing themselves (GE, IBM and Intel, etc.), though not without stumbles along the way. I have seen successful R&D teams slowly torn apart because mgmt have put pressure on them to produce more products and less IP - only to kill the product pipeline in the long run (all while giving themselves far greater bonuses). And then they complain about turn over - duh!

I do not think it coincidental that those companies which do manage to reinvent themselves tend to be vertically integrated in some critically enabling manner (in your examples they all still retained their production facilities) that saw them through the rough times and managed to be leveraged into a competitive advantage when they re-emerged.

Apple is the one counter-example to this that I can think of. But Qualcomm, being fabless, basically only has its IP engine to rely on to differentiate itself in a perpetual sense and that is a difficult treadmill to stay on indefinitely.

When your business lives and dies by the popularity of your products on a 12 month maturation cycle, ugh, that is brutal. You are one bad management policy away from being RIMM or Nortel.

 

[ShintaiDK]

True, but what are 5+ year upgrade cycles (or whatever number it is) going to do to the PS industry? The upgrade cycle is definitely increasing as consumers put their $$s into newer tech, at least for now.

That happens in all segments. Nothing as such to do with PCs. Remember ARM devices shrinked too.

People dont put their money into new tech, they put their money in the bank in fear of the economic future.

 

[mrmt]

True, though some companies are better at re-inventing themselves (GE, IBM and Intel, etc.), though not without stumbles along the way. I have seen successful R&D teams slowly torn apart because mgmt have put pressure on them to produce more products and less IP - only to kill the product pipeline in the long run (all while giving themselves far greater bonuses). And then they complain about turn over - duh!

R&D is a great and cool way to lose money as well, as you may not be able to monetize whatever you research. A text-book case of this would be Xerox and its PARC. A lot of the technologies they researched became great products in other companies and Xerox itself didn't see much of the money.To have technology that cannot go into the company's product is almost as bad as not having technology at all, as in both cases the company'll be trampled by a competitor that has new technology to put in their new product.

A good management team on this can both shield the R&D investment from some stakeholders and at the same time keep the R&D teams away from technologies they won't be able to turn into products.

 

[krumme]

I do not think it coincidental that those companies which do manage to reinvent themselves tend to be vertically integrated in some critically enabling manner (in your examples they all still retained their production facilities) that saw them through the rough times and managed to be leveraged into a competitive advantage when they re-emerged.

Apple is the one counter-example to this that I can think of. But Qualcomm, being fabless, basically only has its IP engine to rely on to differentiate itself in a perpetual sense and that is a difficult treadmill to stay on indefinitely.

When your business lives and dies by the popularity of your products on a 12 month maturation cycle, ugh, that is brutal. You are one bad management policy away from being RIMM or Nortel.

Having own production clearly have the potential to give good feedback to R&D and thereby strengtening the innovation.

I think the point is: you need to have good formal and informal feedback mechanism in the company, so there is good flow of information. The information gives the nessesary knowledge how to reinvent yourself.

The most important factor here is seniority. It takes years for fx. an engineer working with material developing, to know who the other persons in the huge organisation is, that is important to his work. The build up of informal kind of knowledge network is very much dependant on seniority.

The information is also dependant on the culture. The more you are alowed to work independant of hierachy, the more effective the information can flow.

But also the CEO personality makes a difference. If you are Steve Jobs (or JHH), and a nerd playing and loving his toys, it serves as a good role model for the employees. This focus on the product and the curiosity for new things will filter down the organization and fuel development and sharing of knowledge.

 

[StrangerGuy]

I hope the PC industry is separated from the normal macroeconomic situation, because i see exactly the same struggle starting; Dell 13 and 14 is dumped to half price through retail
, IB technology is putt into celeron and send to compete in e450 APU market and so on. I have not seen anything like it for 25 years.

The transistions is different from earlier situations because they all eventuelly leads to lower revenue and profit.
- Integrated SSD in 128GB configurations, will be dirt cheap in 2 or 3 years time and soon be like 16gb micro sd for your phone. The HDD could never go so low in price.
- Cloud is is already free of charge. What is the next step, that you get payed to use it ??
- Nobody pays for the operation system anymore and expects upgrade every ½ year
- And the extreme prices mobile producers charge for low BOM today will soon take a nose dive when the likes of Huawei steps on the pedal, as midrange smartphones is soon good enough, and everyone and his brother have dual core a7 in all their machines.

What the sector needs is some radical innovation, like the ones Apple brought to the table.

Whoever that isn't vertically integrated like Samsung and Apple stands to lose a lot more this round. Guess what Intel isn't.

 

[Idontcare]

Whoever that isn't vertically integrated like Samsung and Apple stands to lose a lot more this round. Guess what Intel isn't.

Yeah Samsung is crazy vertically integrated. Even more so than Apple because Samsung has both processor and memory fabrication and turns out finished products (from memory to SSD to LCD to smartphone).

Intel differentiating factor is their leading-edge process technology which no other relevant company on the planet has access to (outside of a few inconsequential foundry customers).

That is the key difference between Intel and Qualcomm IMO. Both have great management and product design teams now, but Qualcomm is critically dependent on TSMC meeting their timeline and cost window.

TI was top-dog in mobile phones until 2007 when they decided they were going fabless as far as process nodes beyond 65nm. Management gambled and they got their asses handed to them, Qualcomm and Apple ate their lunch. Look at what Nokia did to itself, and all it took was one person - the CEO - to take something golden and turn it into a turd.

 

[Ajay]

Yeah Samsung is crazy vertically integrated. Even more so than Apple because Samsung has both processor and memory fabrication and turns out finished products (from memory to SSD to LCD to smartphone).

Intel differentiating factor is their leading-edge process technology which no other relevant company on the planet has access to (outside of a few inconsequential foundry customers).

Yeah, Intel will get to 5 nm, will anyone else do so in a timely fashion? If TSMC gets stuck @ 10nm for 24 months longer than usual; I'm starting to wonder if Intel will eat ARM alive at that point. Just a thought, haven't even scribbled anything on the back of a napkin.

TI was top-dog in mobile phones until 2007 when they decided they were going fabless as far as process nodes beyond 65nm. Management gambled and they got their asses handed to them, Qualcomm and Apple ate their lunch. Look at what Nokia did to itself, and all it took was one person - the CEO - to take something golden and turn it into a turd.

Sad days for both TI and Nokia.

 

[Raghu]

It's not the tape-out date.
But i don't know if that is a real picture of Grey. nVidia is not really correct with such things.

Looks like it was the real deal

http://www.anandtech.com/Gallery/Album/2649#2

And yes, that would be the ~manufacturing date. The tapeout would have happened much earlier.