The story is probably pretty simple, management anticipated selling products. However, they got minimal design wins, inventory built up, and now they face either a write off or substantial discounting.
IMO products not selling as anticipated include include Aurora, SonicVibes, GX, GX/2, Plato, MX. In short, every product under GJ has undersold. One can expect a few bumps in the road, but this guy is 0 for 6. I think it is more than reasonable to expect better performance, and justified or not the first guy that gets the blame is the CEO.
If GJ doesn't like the photo, perhaps he can send me a better one, I'd be happy to post it for him. The article (old) where I found that GIF describes the marketing strategy of branding a company's name. The amount of money spent on S3's campaign was quite large. In an interview with a S3 person recently J. Dvorak (Ziff-Davis, i.e. PC magazine, etc.) looked at the logo and basically said "what the heck is that?" Just more $$$ down the drain.
Even if S3 had Faroudja technology ready to go there is a high probability that GJ would screw it up. Look what he did with SonicVibes. Regardless of the company, poor management is the worst place you can put your money. JMHO.
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