VIA sales down 30%, financial trouble = motherboard selection care

[lookin4dlz]

xbitlabs is reporting the following - [L=VIA: Sales are 30% Down, Earnings per Share Fall 95%![url]http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1030189378[/url][/L]

I believe that too many people don't take the financial stability of companies into consideration when buying components. To survive, these companies start cutting corners and quality goes down (like what might've happened w/ IBM's hard drive division before IBM ditched that business). I've been bitten a couple of times when a tech company has died & I've lost the ability to get warranty service and rebates fulfilled. It's not fun :|

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

I think it is a bit premature to write of Via at this point. They have had a bad year, but that does not mean that they are dead to rights by any stretch of the imagination. Intel, AMD, nVidia have all had a bad year... the whole industry has had a bad year.

This year has seen incredible losses across the entire industry. The most recent death of Visiontek - an nVidia partner - shows how bad it is out there. Visiontek's fall is most disturbing, because they were one of the leading producers of nVidia cards - some of the most popular on the planet.

You can (and should) be careful) when buying a product. In today's market, there are no guarantees...

 

[CaptnKirk]

There are two things that are hammering the Computer Tech market, first - they are reaching a point where many of the companies and people who want computers already have a computer, so there is no longer as big a market to sell to, and
second - with the technology evolving at a rate where new equipment hits the market every 2 - 3 months, some are waiting for the next BIG thing to hit and reserving their purchase for when that happens. The nickle & dime changes that have been coming out since October of last year have driven the price down through competition, but the move from PC2100 to PC2700 was NOT that big of an advance compared to what was expected from it. Same on the boost to PC3200, it's not a stunning improvement over the PC2700 stage, the 266 to 333 shift was not the 25% improvement it looks like on paper, and the 333 to 400 shift has even less of an overhead to improve by. VIA is still one of the more inventive chip makers, and we can only guess what the next
'BIG THING' will really be.

 

[lookin4dlz]

Definitely, not time to write VIA off but I was shocked their sales declined by such a large amount. In my continual quest for system enhancements I was looking around the Internet at motherboard reviews & saw this news about VIA. Kinda bumped them down a notch on my list.

Yeah the Visiontek thing was surprising too - very, very close to buying one of their nVidia cards last time I was in the market for one.

All of this + my experiences w/ defunct companies (ha - just remembered about my NextCard Visa & the points I lost, although Amazon did the right thing & sent me a GC for part of them) just makes me wary about buying from any company that might not survive. Makes all of my hard deal work seem fruitless

 

[Peter]

Well since Intel's chipset/mainboard business nor SiS let alone ALi are doing any better, so what?

regards, Peter

 

[Vette73]

VIA is not doing any worse than anybody else in this sector, AMD lost money this Quarter, Intel is WAY down. The only group doing any better chipset wise is SiS, and that is because os there Intel chipsets (648)

I have always used Via, until now because I am running 2 AMD Cpus- so 760MPX. But if Via had a Dual AMD setup I would look at it REAL HARD. KT333 performance and the power of Dual Cpu's, you bet I would look at it.