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VIA概况
VIA is a fabless semiconductor design company, that means we design quite a lot range of different ICs, primarily now the focus being on CPUs and supporting Chipsets. We have around over 2,000 emplyees globally, mainly in Taiwan, but also in Chia and also in the US. And we now sell around 600 million dollars a year.

VIA从芯片组走向处理器平台
(Is the company profitable?) Currently the moment NOT, but we expect that situation to change toward the end the this year. I think one of the key things that happened in the last couple of years is that we've gone through a transition. Originally we were primarily focused on the chipset, the core logic chipset bussiness. And we transitioned across to the cou processor's platform bussiness. And that involves some major changes in the way we conduct our bussiness and also in our financials. Well I think the initial challenges with the chipset bussiness is that you never in charge of your own destiny. You very rely on the cpu vendor, and supporting the changes and technologies that the cpu vendor mandates. For awhile, it was very good bussiness, but it becomes a lot more compatitive. Also if you look in terms of margin in pricing, that is gone down very considerablely. And when we were very strong in terms of xxx and suddenly everyone else looks at the chipset market and said, Look it's fantastic. So you have nVidia comes in and ATi etc, all start to come into the chipset market. Which in the end means the market is being commoditised quite aggressively. Also you see a trend that every vendor, whether it's Via, whether it's Intel or AMD, every cpu vendor is xxx a very very long term integration, different approaches into integration but still long term integration. That means ultermately what your chipset gonna be is gonna be a IO set and bridge controll and that's it. I think that's a challenge for companies who do not have cpu capability. This in long term does not really make sense in terms of being in the chipset bussiness. Now we would argue that it's very very difficult, more and more severity to provid a platform, a complete platform rather than one single discrete components within that platform.

VIA处理器定位未来移动主流
So strategyly, a long time ago, we thought we need to move towards cpu bussiness, which is why we purchase Cyrix and Centaur design teams around 7~8 years ago. And slowly we've been building up support platform around those processors. So those really are our core bussiness we move forward. But in addition to that, support those processors, you need to have good graphics technology, you need to have good connectivity, for example the USB, wireless in some cases, and also vedio technology as well, and audio. And we have all those key technologies as part of our overall capabilities. I think when we first moved into the cpu bussiness, we pretty much decided very early on that it doesn't make sense for us to compete in the MHz and GHz wars. And we felt at some stage there will be a transition away from pure performance measurement like GHz. And that happened 2~3 years ago, now it's gathering pace at a even fast rate. And what we also felt is if you look in terms of what main stream products is. Obviously for many years it's the desktop. But I think if you look into the future, the main stream becomes notebook, and beyond that will become smaller, ultra mobile devices, maybe a pc with phone capability also integerated in it. So one of the questions is how you define the main stream. Our processors we focus on low power, we focus on high levels of integration. Becouse it's ultimately believed that will be the mass volumn market, whether its notebook, mini-notebook, or phone-type devices, that's where we are positioning forward. Right now these are called initials, but they are starting to grow very quickly. If you look at the notebook, probably the next year, or by 2010, it  will be a bigger market than the desktop's. If you look at this year, on e of the key trend is the mini-note trend. We started over last year with our Via notbook and xxx, that can grow very very quickly in the next couple of years. After that, you will see a huge explotion of growth in phone like devices with x86 capability. So we are positioning for future main stream rather than the main market of the past.

Intel的进入有助于市场发展
Obviously Intel coming out with main low level platform-silverthorn, it does add some level of competition. But at the same time, I think it also means that the market will grow much more quickly. Via is relatively a smaller company, and I think if you look at Intel's track record, where you will find buildings in the new market is what we already do in a very large scale. And so we believe that Intel's entry into this market validates pretty much of our strategy what we've been saying form many years. And second, we will help spark a pretty rapid growth in the market, that I think will also benifits Via. And I also think from a customer's perspective, as what we always like to see, that they've got choices of platforms, that you aren't necessary rely 100% on one vendor. So here is a very nice position where they talk with Via and Via is also with Intel, and that can make mix-and-match platform...So competition is yet to be tough, but at the same time I think we do add some value. We've got a lot of experience, we've got very low power and very good architecture, so we are quite confident.  We will be competitative and we will grow as the market grows.

对如Montalvo等市场新入者
I think, regard saying a new start-up, my own position on this is that it's gonna be very difficult for any company, no matter how well financed or how good engineering is to enter the x86 market at this stage. One, the market itself is very very mature. And two, it's not just the case of simply having a decent product, it's about you need to convince custormers you can be over there for the long term. You've got to have long technology roadmap. You've got to have strong foundry relationships so you can build the parts, build cost-effectively and response very quickly to custormer's demands. And I personally think that's extremely difficult. In a way speaking the Montalvo, if they can validate what is right moment into the market and select the right segment to be in. Based on my experience at Via, it's a very hard work, as getting into customers and getting into design wins. One of the key barrier is the IP barrier. Also one thing guys from Centaur always emphasize is getting the compound compatiblility is a huge task. Design a cpu that can run all PC applications as well as anything else developed over the internet is a massive job. And any new start-up that tries toto get in, that's the key challenge.

还有低端桌面市场和OEM
There are a lot of market oppotunities for us in the UMPC market, and also in the notebook market. And we see that a big volumn jump in the next couple of years. At the same time, however, if you look at what happening in the desktop as thin client. There's a gread demand for energy-efficient solutions and platforms. Right now Everex,  before Christmas, announced a product called gPC which is a desktop PC basked on VIA C7, which did extremely well in the market. And I certainly think that will continue and in fact the desktop volumn will grow as well as our mobile  volumns. Right now we are a quite small player, depending on what quoted is less than 5% of the global market, maybe recently probably less than 2%. So this oppotunity for us to grow both in the notebook market and traditional desktop market, and in new market such as thin-client market, a back place where we are already strong. If you look at the UMPC space,... we do have design wins with people like Samsung, also people like OQO. Overall we have over 40 design wins. You have xxx in Europe, also companies like Founder in China introduced our cpus in the notebooks. And also people like Everex in the US. So the design wins actually have already been very very promising. Ok, there's no xxx OEMs xxx yet in that space, with the exception of Samsung. But I think a longer term, that definitely has potential of that happening. I think if you look at, for exsample, the HP does use our cpus in thin clients and also use our cpus in the green PC that introduced into China. So we do have penetration among leading OEMs.

·UberPulse的报道：
http://www.uberpulse.com/us/2008/02/intel_and_montalvo_entry_in_via_says.php

发表于 @ 2008年02月21日 11:23:00|评论(loading...)|编辑