Intel flattens VIA sales

VIA Technologies said its sales for October remained flat relative to the same month last year, a few days after reporting a sharp drop in third-quarter revenues. The company, which is the second-largest chipset maker after Intel, has said that legal trouble with Intel has scared away many of its customers.

Revenues for October 2001 reached just over NT$3bn (£61.6m). The figure is a 17.1 percent increase over September's NT$2.6bn, but is roughly the same as sales for October 2000.

Sales revenues for the year to the end of October amount to more than NT$29bn, up 13.01 percent from the same period last year.

VIA's problems began in the third quarter, whose pretax profits slid 21.6 percent from the second quarter. Announcing the profit slide a week ago, the company blamed Intel's lawsuits against VIA for scaring off potential customers. Intel is targeting a VIA chipset for Intel's Pentium 4 processor, which it claims is not licensed. Intel has taken VIA to court in the US and three other counries.

A chipset connects the processor with other PC components, such as memory and storage.

In a move to get around Intel's legal actions, VIA recently launched a new division to build its own motherboards using the disputed chipset. VIA does not have its own manufacturing facilities, but will outsource the motherboard production. According to industry rumour, the subcontractors will in some cases themselves employ subcontractors to build the boards.

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