NVIDIA denied rumors Friday that it might exit the chipset business. DigiTimes of Taipei had reported that NVIDIA indicated to a Taiwanese motherboard partner that it would not be in the chipset business in the near future.
But Derek Perez, director of press relations at NVIDIA, said in a phone interview, “It’s completely false. In fact, we’re growing market share in the chipset business.”
NVIDIA has also been rumored to be in negotiations with Apple to use its chipsets in Apple’s notebook computers. Asked if NVIDIA would be partnering with Apple, Perez replied, “I have no comment on that. I have no knowledge of any arrangement with Apple.”
DigiTimes said NVIDIA would move chipset engineering resources to its more lucrative graphics processing unit (GPU) products. The rumor may have been fueled by some motherboard manufacturers canceling plans to use NVIDIA’s nForce 7 chipset. Additionally, some board makers will not be using NVIDIA’s nForce 200 chip, which enables multiple NVIDIA graphics cards to run on Intel x58 motherboards.
As far back as April there have been reports that NVIDIA has lost significant motherboard chipset business, primarily as a result of less-than-stellar sales of AMD motherboards over the past year. In addition, AMD is producing its own chipsets for its Phenom processor, giving NVIDIA and other chipset providers cause for concern. To complicate matters further, AMD’s acquisition of ATI gives the chipmaker less reason to accommodate NVIDIA’s SLI chipsets for running multiple GPUs.
On July 3 the company’s stock fell 19 percent on news that its earnings report would show a drop of 25 percent due to “field failures” of new chipsets. Estimates from one financial firm put 17 percent of NVIDIA’s current business in chipsets, with the lion’s share from its GPUs. Analysts believe NVIDIA currently holds around 6 percent of the…