Hi Cary,
It seems that "niche" chip manufacturers seem to do well until
a competitor decides to incorporate the same functionality into
a superior design. An example of this is video chip makers, they
were making lots of money in 94-95-96 until competitors decided
to come out with multimedia processors which included sound,
DVD, MPEG, 2D/3D, Memory, RAMDAC, video display drivers & other features on just 1 chip.
This competition has really lowered the prices for
these chips and boards from several hundred dollars to around
$100-$160, which is great for consumers and system manufacturers
but has played havoc with the profit margins of most video chip
and video board manufacturers, for that reason there have been, and
will continue to be consolidation and mergers in this sector. Foundries
that go to 12" manufacturing at 0.25u and below will lower costs and
margins even further. If this functionality is eventually included into
a CPU's design then those video/sound board businesses will cease to exist except as design groups attached to CPU producers.
I'm not familiar with LLTC but I know MXIM makes chips for
GPS handheld systems though I'm not sure of their market. I have
been in the Maxim fab in Portland, Ore, it use to be the old Techtronics fab, which was sold to Maxim 4 or 5 years ago.
They seem to be doing alright but I really don't know who their
competition is, if any. I suspect that if they have exclusive patent
rights that they will do ok, this is one niche that has only just begun to
grow its potential market, in time GPS will be on nearly every vehical
to allow instant map orientation/ location and tracking, especially for
trucking companies and police/rescue vehicals.
I might have to do some research into this one.8^)
Good Investing.
BB |
