VIA Technologies has placed extra orders on their low-end core-logic sets in December, as the demand had exceeded their earlier expectations. According to DigiTimes, the Taipei, Taiwan-based integrated circuits designer received additional orders on the KT266A, P4X266A and P4M266A chipsets that are more than a year old and are rather outdated at the moment both in terms of features and performance.

VIA is currently not satisfied with their December business results, thus, they are very glad to sell some more products, even if they are cheap and relatively old.

I believe that the reason why the mentioned chipsets are in demand is pretty simple and is practically the same as the reason that conditioned the return of SDR SDRAM-supporting platforms a bit earlier (see this news-story). The personal computer vendors want to offer the cheapest computers possible, while the mainboard manufacturers try to get rid of the old PCBs for mainboards powered by either KT266A, P4X266A or P4M266A core-logic.

There is also Chinese New Year holidays to come in February, and mainboard makers will have more opportunities to sell their not expensive PC2100-supporting platforms in this country, where the price is a very important factor. The latter also means that both VIA Technologies and their rival Silicon Integrated Systems are likely to enjoy the rise in sales next month.