The global and South African PC market will see the largest growth in the low-cost, "value" segment, says a Taiwanese chipset- and CPU-maker marketing executive.
Speaking to Rectron dealers and the press in Sandton yesterday, Richard Brown, international marketing director of Via Technologies, said the market for high performance machines was still large, but Via expected "real growth" to be in the under-$500, under-$300 and even under-$200 segment of the PC market.
The $1 billion Taipei-based Via Technologies has appointed Rectron as its sole distributor and representative for the sub-Saharan region. Rectron also distributes AMD and Intel processors.
Brown said Via`s chipset market share has grown from less than 10% a couple of years ago to the present 35% to 40%, while the expected revenue growth for 2001 was 50%, up to $1.5 billion.
He said 98% of Via`s business was in the core logic chipset market, with nine out of ten global original equipment manufacturers using the Via Apollo chipset platform. However, Via now aims to grow its CPU business. It will not be not be competing with Intel`s Pentium 3 and 4 processors but will rather focus on the value-end of the market.
Brown described Via`s C3 processor as the coolest processor on the market, with energy consumption and heat dissipation so low that it allows for fanless designs. Low heating increases reliability and also makes C3 very good for notebooks, he said.
Via`s cool-processing technology is the benefit of using the 0.15 micron manufacturing process. Brown said Via was the first in the industry to build a 0.15 micron chip, adding that C3 was "the smallest X86 processor die size with full processing capability".
C3 is based on the Socket 370 platform and offers clock speeds of up to 750MHz, with 128KB L1 and 64KB L2 cache. Speeds of 800MHz and beyond will also be available.
Brown explained "We are in the same situation where AMD was two to three years ago. Intel is aggressively pushing Pentium 4 and the new generation of motherboards, while the Socket 370 platform is very mature and we`ll continue to support it."
Brown described Via as "the fabless semiconductor company". "We don`t have our own foundry or manufacturing plants. TSMC, the biggest foundry in the world, does the manufacturing for Via, as it does for Iomega and others. We only do the design."
Brown said the relationship with Taipei-based TSMC and not having to invest in a foundry gives Via a strong competitive position. "We use world-leading manufacturing processes and have a competitive cost structure."
Looking at market trends, Brown said this year was "a big wake up call for everybody in the PC industry". He said the "C" in PC is changing from "computing" to "connectivity". This, he said, was going to drive growth in the market, which will see a new wave of different, smaller devices, offering more convergence of computing, connectivity and communications capabilities.
He said Via has a "Value Internet Architecture Strategy" to drive rapid development of these devices. Aiming to drive the price down to under $200, Via has designed a couple of Internet appliances - an Information PC and a set-top box, as well as a new form factor - the ITX motherboard, which Brown said was "the smallest in the market with the highest level of integration".
Brown said the South African market was an exciting one, with large growth potential in the value PC segment. He said Via has the right offerings to meet that need, and will invest in local marketing to boost the awareness of its brand.
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