Shareholder Confidence
NVIDIA and ATI are to the graphics card segment what Intel and AMD are to the CPU market. In the past, NVIDIA was the unchallenged number one. However, ATI has caught up with its products and also managed to put itself in a better position. No one would have thought ATI capable of it just two years ago. We watched NVIDIA slowly turning into a de facto monopoly - just like Intel. But things changed rapidly. ATI's market capitalization is now up to $3.4 billion, whereas NVIDIA has to be happy with $1.6 billion. The way the share prices are moving is another clear indicator.
ATI has managed to recover well from its low of two years ago, and despite the unfavorable market situation, the company has sustained its share price at a relatively stable level.
NVIDIA on the other hand has been flagging, particularly since the launch of PCI Express. So are the shareholders unhappy about product strategy? The last quarterly report caused the share price to drop sharply to $10. NVIDIA has only AGP chips on offer at the moment. The PCI Express link is based on an HSI bridge chip. In contrast, ATi is offers native PCI Express graphics processors, and as a result it can do without an expensive bridge chip.
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