Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : S3 (A LONGER TERM PERSPECTIVE) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Don Earl who wrote (12531)	1/8/1999 8:31:00 AM
From: mark doubiago	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14577

Apple as far as I can remember, always seemed to have a group of vendors that mostly supported it to the exclusion of the IBM PC compatible market that S3 plays in. Many companies would only make products for one or the other. That has changed to some degree over the last few years with the decline of Apple's market share (though it is coming back up now). Many companies switched over to a more IBM compatible market segment. On the other hand, some companies such as Microsoft started producing software or hardware for Macs. I believe that the latest market share showed Apple at either 8% or 15%, can't remember which. If you had all this business, that would be quite a nice little sum of money to add to the bottom line. If several of the card or chip makers started producing Mac compatible hardware, the market shares could be quite small and maybe not even worth the trouble and cost for S3 to reengineer products. Another point against S3 entering this market, is the problems that they seem to encounter when they shift their focus from their core business. I don't know if everyone remembers Plato, Sonic Vibes, modems, etc. They spent a lot of time and money on these products and then dropped them for whatever reasons. The loss of focus definitely hurt the bottom line. I am thinking that Plato may still not be a total loss if they still have the knowhow from that project as they start to work on more integrated products now and in the future. I think that I would be more comfortable with them if they stayed out of the Apple market and just concentrated on getting a full product line that had stable software drivers. On a side note. Hamid, why don't you let us know who the design win is with? I am guessing that you are refering to an OEM win. For anyone interested, There are around 40 known customers for the Savage chip. For a list of them see WBC_98's post: messages.yahoo.com@m2.yahoo.com