VIA Selling S3 Graphics to HTC
VIA has signed a deal to sell off S3 Graphics to smartphone manufacturer HTC for $300 Million
Wednesday Taiwan-based x86 processor platform developer VIA Technologies said that it signed a definitive agreement to sell all of its shareholding in S3 Graphics to smartphone manufacturer HTC.
The company originally acquired S3 Graphics back in 2001 with the intention to accelerate integration of graphics capabilities with its processor and chipset products. But by 2005, S3 Graphics was unable to acquire the funds it needed to stay afloat (aka undercapitalized), thus private investment company WTI Investment International, Ltd. (“WTI”) stepped in as an additional investor to help fund the operations and R&D initiatives. Cher Wang, Chairman of VIA, is a significant shareholder of WTI.
"Under terms of the agreement with HTC, total consideration for all outstanding shares of S3 Graphics will be US$300 million," VIA said in an announcement. "Of which, VIA will receive US$147 million; and WTI will receive US$153 million. VIA will recognize a capital gain of US$ $37 million and paid-in-capital of US$115 million in this transaction."
"The transaction would allow VIA to monetize a portion of its rich IP portfolio, yet retain its graphics capabilities to support the development and sale of its processors and chipsets," said Tzu-mu Lin, Senior Vice President and Board Director of VIA. "We wish to thank WTI for its capital contribution to support S3 Graphics since 2005."
Although the proposed transaction has been given the green light by VIA, WTI and HTC board of directors, it will still be subject to regulatory approvals and "other customary conditions." The deal is expected to be sealed before the end of 2011.
- HTC,
- VIA,
- Business,
- shareholding ,
- undercapitalized ,
- S3-Graphics ,
- WTI ,
- Cher-Wang
- Deals for July 6: Sid Meier's Civilization V $19.95
- Toshiba Glasses-Free 3D Laptop Coming in August
- Power Consumption Solved: Magnetic Processors
- Deals for July 5: Logitech Mouse MX for $53.99 FS
- The Early Good and Bad of the HP TouchPad
- World's Biggest Pac-Man Game Through HTML5
- IBM Develops Memory 100x Faster Than Flash
- Tom's Hardware Benchmark Charts Updated!
- Age of Conan MMORPG Now Free-To-Play
- EA Explains Why Crysis 2 Was Pulled from Steam
- Deals for July 7: 25% Off Dell UltraSharp LCDs
- Square Enix Sues Over Deus Ex: HR Leak
- Patent Troll Claims Notebook Cooling Rights
- Gateway Crams 14'' Screen Into 13'' Laptop
- LCD Panel Pricing on the Rise
- Chip Inventories Rise Again in Q2
- Deals for July 8: Logitech Revue Google TV $149
- Deals for July 11: 2.5TB WD External HDD $99 FS
THEY HAD BOGHT ATI IMAGEON BEFORE ! SO WHY DID THEY NID S3 ?
so via never benefited or saw any of s3's IP?
s3 graphics mostly sucked so via didn't need it
I had a old motherboard with s3 graphics, I had to run notepad on low settings.
THEY HAD BOGHT ATI IMAGEON BEFORE ! SO WHY DID THEY NID S3 ?
Imageon was discontinued, and not sold...
Cheap price for a chip company, if you'd ask me.
Notepad joke fail....
S3 had some good technologies for the time, it surpassed even some Nvidia cards in 1999-2000. Hope to see some development now!
The S3 chips weren't all that bad. Matrox was the undisputed leader, but S3 was a splendid option for anyone still sitting with old isa cards. They lost the fight when the riva and tnt cards arrived, but not before then.
sad
I still have a PCI Virge with 4 MB
Wonder if Nvidia will see this as a chance to make a deal with VIA especially if APU's take off
sad
Indeed. Two turkeys do not make an eagle.
another one bites the dust....maybe it's a good thing...to much crap out there
S3 lost the fight when 3Dfx graphics came out.
S3 actually made some good chips during the TNT times, the Savage 4 was decent with METAL and S3 Texture Compression. Very few games supported METAL though, they opted for the 3DFX Glide and OpenGL standard.
Overall they were a decent "budget" vender back in the day with really good 2D acceleration. Via only bought them for their 2D acceleration tech so that Via could produce all-in-one boards. Same reason they acquired Cyrix. These days none of that is needed so Via just shedding it and letting HTC use it for smartphone / tablet integration.
And yes I would absolutely love to see a Via Nano x2 + Tegra type integrated product.
S3 lost the fight when 3Dfx graphics came out.
not really, cause at the beginning 3dfx couldn't stand alone. It needed a 2d card to work. Only with the second generation did it get challenged, and the '16bit only' limitation of voodoo made other options better (despite performing worse). In the end, it was the advent of directx and true 2d and 3d capable graphics cards from ati and nvidia that made the difference. Before then s3 was fine. It had enough memory, and was sufficiently vesa compliant (means almost all dos games would work without needing univesa or anything else).
in short 3dfx might've started the 3d wave, but can't be credited for S3's failure to keep up.
My motherboard has VIA S3G UniChrome IGP graphics(2004), and it sucks even compared to 2000s Intel's IGPs.
Good riddance, I'll say.
Isn't VIA and HTC owned by husband and wife, respectively?
S3 graphics have been pretty low end for the last decade. Even though VIA had S3 release dedicated GPUs a little while ago they have been regulated to the low end and set top boxes. Too bad VIA couldn't really capitalize on it. They should have been able to come out with a fusion esk chip well before Intel and AMD if they really wanted.
Would be nice to see a third mega vid-chip maker to come out... besides intel and their left toe-nail graphics.....
Surprised no one has made the connection that Husband is CEO of Via and Wife is CEO of HTC. So this isn't really that big of news...
Now that VIA is selling off S3, they may be a better fit with nVidia now. Nvidia has basically been muscled out of the low end, where there is the most profit, by Intel and AMD. That is why they aligned themselves with ARM for phones/tablets. They still have some of the best high end desktop graphics, but I feel they will continue to be pushed further out of the desktop sector unless the become a true third pillar in the computing industry.
Gee, I thought VIA was dead? I remember having a older P3 desktop with a VIA chipset. But it never competed back then and have not heard much from them lately either.
VIA is alive and kicking in the mobile, and miniATX market.
Via is definitely alive, just not so much in the PC market. Their extremely popular in the industrial sector and in retail POS, Kiosks and ATM's. Basically anything where you need an integrated application specific device you'll find Via.
s3 graphics mostly sucked so via didn't need itI had a old motherboard with s3 graphics, I had to run notepad on low settings.
My motherboard has VIA S3G UniChrome IGP graphics(2004), and it sucks even compared to 2000s Intel's IGPs.Good riddance, I'll say.
I have an old ECS Elitegroup PM-800M2 motherboard with integrated S3 UniChrome graphics that I use in my basement fileserver. I don't know what kind of crap you're talking about but it runs windows, movies and many older games just fine. Notepad on low settings? Notepad was originally in Windows 3.1 when graphics cards had 512k on them. Are you going to tell me that black letters on a white screen suddenly have greater requirements? S3 graphics may not be fantastic but at least they were never expensive like Intel's crappy offerings.
I still have a PCI Virge with 4 MB
Just wondering, do you have any modern drivers for that or were those of win98/winNT the last ones?