The key to Intel's domination
Published: 11 Aug 2004 12:35 BST
PC chipsets are inexpensive, lack brand names and rarely get promoted to consumers, but they are the components that Intel uses to colonise new markets.
Although the chipmaker garners most of its revenue and profits from such well-known processors as the Pentium 4 or the Xeon, it's unsung heroes like the $40 (£21.90) 915G Express chipset, released earlier this year, that have let Intel become the largest and fastest-growing graphics chip designers on the planet.
The 915 family incorporates a variety of technological enhancements, including faster memory, higher-performance graphics and audio, and the option for a built-in wireless access point. The chipset family will also give the company an opportunity to erode some of TiVo's dominance in digital video recorders and to once again become a dominant force in home Wi-Fi access points.
"There will definitely be a threat to Linksys and those companies if the desktop becomes an access point," said Kenn Furer, an analyst with IDC. "If anything, (Intel) becomes a threat because there's less need for the access point in addition to the desktop."
By making its own brand of wireless cards readily available, Intel "makes it tougher for someone like Broadcom or Atheros to be as automatic of a choice," Furer said.
Price and pervasiveness are what make Intel chipsets -- a collection of chips that assist in shuttling data to and from the processor and controlling input/output -- such a looming danger.
Adding graphics functionality by way of one of Intel's new chipsets tacks on only about $3 (£1.64) to the base price of making a PC. Standalone graphics chips can cost $15 to $30. On the wireless side, Intel's wireless bundle, which includes Wi-Fi chips along with the chipset, will cost $50, about the same as a standalone wireless router now. That price, though, can probably be cut, because the Intel bundle doesn't need a separate box -- it's simply part of the computer.
Intel has about 60 percent of the chipset market. And licensees that make compatible chipsets, such as SiS and ALI, integrate similar functionality, putting further pressure on existing equipment makers.
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