To: Michael Linov who wrote (8055 ) 10/8/1998 8:09:00 PM From: Michael Linov Respond to of 16960
More Q&A from DIMD conference call (my transcript - contd.) Price points for Viper/Fusion... How much investment in NVIDIA, any S3 boards? V550 199 Fusion 149 NVIDIA $3M investment (ed. note: sounds like STB), structured as a loan converted to equity (or cash on Dec. ) Fewer highlight skews means no deal for S3 : ) Unless major OEM wants a Savage3d, they don't intend to release one. They think they have products competing in all areas already. Memory selling below cost. $1 Chip for RAM now! (ed. note: wow!) Sell through in channel WAS STRONGER in July and August (ed. Note: Diamond dried up their inventory (mostly legacy products),unable to meet demand on graphics product(ed. note: Not V2's)). Strength in Mid-low end of graphics market. New router product, no real competition (much higher price), good margin. Chip allocations of NVIDIA, Banshee. No allocation issues. Margins on new products: Margins substantialy improved. reo - control technology, selling on internet, more DIRECT dollars, and margins significantly above the graphics business. Graphics products - viper and fusion all have substantially higher standard gross margin (not unusual for new introduction). Margins will drop over time as products become older. Diamond also controls the A3D (AURL) silicon, can sustain margin longer. Home network product, good opportunity for good margin. Proprietary product margins over 30%. The graphics business - Still in infancy of 3d performance. Dramatic leaps expected. Developers driven by gaming, getting larger textures, more memory on graphics card, DVD support, better video , greater resolution, Digital Output , Flat panel output). Graphics model next year will still be driven by gaming applications. Moving to integrated 2d/3d. Growth in Sub $1000 market, lots of opportunity in low cost system. Only differentiation in OEM's is graphic sub-system. Graphics (80-90% last year) 60-65% (mainly due to added product lines like reo, comm. etc) over revenue next year. Core graphics won't shrink, others will grow. Diamond is planning to move graphics to MB (via new board operation). that's it. Feel free to add/correct any of the above... it's hard to transcribe this stuff in real time.