by Anton Shilov
03/26/2003 | 12:26 PM
Taiwanese chipset designers, VIA Technologies and Silicon Integrated Systems, who have not been able to fully fulfill the demand on their products for a number of months already (see this news-story for more details) reported that all chipset manufacturing capacity problems will be resolved next month.
<%BANNER[article]%>Both SiS and VIA expect sales uptick in April compared to March, however, it is very likely that this month they will stay flat or only modestly up from February, what is not good at all because last month was definitely not a successful one.
In April SiS and VIA will start to supply their latest Socket A chipsets, such as KT400A, KM400 and SiS748. Even if these core-logic sets will not be too successful due to overall condition of the Socket A market, new business opportunities are indisputably positive for Taiwanese chipset designers these days.
Unfortunately for SiS, even with UMC’s manufacturing capacities it will still not be able to fulfill all the orders on its inexpensive Pentium 4-supporting products next month, so, expect another boost of the Hsinchu-based company sales in May. Since VIA Technologies is not dependent on any agreements with Intel, it is likely that it will be able to experience stronger sales of its Pentium 4 chipsets with 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus, meanwhile SiS and ATI will only secure their licenses on 800MHz QPB in the second half of the year.
Remember that SiS and VIA are also trying to penetrate various markets of multimedia and SoC devices this year, hence, if there are no problems with allocation, Taiwanese chipset makers may also increase their sales with such products.