VIA Drop Motherboard Chipset Arm To Focus On CPUs

VIA have confirmed that they will be abandoning their chipset business, concentrating instead on their own x86 processors and integrated motherboards.  The move comes, according to Richard Brown, vice president of corporate marketing in Taiwan, as the end-point of a long term transition to processors, prompted by the company's realisation that Intel and AMD would both corner the market in own-name chipsets and third-party offerings from VIA would be edged out.

"One of the main reasons we originally moved into the x86 processor business was because we believed that ultimately the third party chipset market would disappear, and we would need to have the capability to provide a complete platform ... Intel provides the vast majority of chipsets for its processors and, following its purchase of ATI, AMD is also moving very quickly in the same direction" Brown, vice president of corporate marketing, VIA

VIA themselves admit that the third-party motherboard industry has been highly competitive, and the company has previously been accused of using technology from Intel's Pentium 4 in their own products without first licencing it.  Recently VIA took on Intel's Atom CPU in a contentious video purporting to demonstrate how their own Nano ultraportable processor was more capable of high-definition playback.

The company has not confirmed when it may end production.  There is also no suggestion of what will happen to the chipset staff that are currently employed.

[via SlashDot]