“This contention against the monopoly of 1st tier main board manufacturers will violate the main board market’s ecological balance established for years,” said source from the graphic card market.
More than 80% of main boards are produced by the Top 5 manufacturers: Asus, ECS, Foxconn, Gigabyte and MSI. Since the sales of its chipsets is simply manipulated by the Top 5, to ensure its good sales and free the control, NVIDIA is now enlarging its main board OEM business step by step and does not merely focus on advanced modes.
Not long ago, NVIDIA developed an nForce 680i SLi reference board for part of the 2nd tier main board manufacturers and AIC partners to sell using their own brand. Due to the time saved from development, it let manufacturers to launch the product even earlier then the Top 5. The result was so encouraging and therefore NVIDIA is going to enlarge the scale of main board OEM further.
NVIDIA has decided to take advantage of its AIC partner’s channel of graphic cards to sell the main board products as a strategy on against of the Top 5, said a marketer from the graphic card market. On Mar 26, NVIDIA releases the reference design of the value nForce 680LT SLi main board. Date of retail launch would be a month earlier than boards which are designed by the manufacturers themselves. Soon, reference designs of nForce 650i Ultra, GeForce 7000/nForce 630i and GeForce 7000/nForce 630a family for the essential market will also be distributed and sold from the channel.
NVIDIA makes motherboards for AIC partners
Posted on Tuesday, March 27 2007 @ 4:32 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck