Gigabyte to go aggressive on VIA-chipset based mobos

Gigabyte and VIA will be working in close association to design and market motherboard solutions best suited for the Indian market´s requirements. VIA chipset-based motherboards cater to a different customer segment and have a huge market potential by itself. Gigabyte is working closely with VIA Technologies at expanding its product offering in the VIA chipset-based motherboard space and the recent months have seen a slew of launches in this segment; more launches are expected in the coming months. 

VIA is a popular chipset in the Intel P4 FSB400/533 segment and has about 40-50% marketshare. Gigabyte has recently launched a full fledged solution ­ GA-8VM533 - based on the VIA P4M266A chipset for Intel P4 segment. It would soon be launching a VIA-based solution for FSB800 - the GA-8VM800M motherboard and also discrete solutions based on VIA´s KT880 and KT800 chipsets.

Till recently, the AMD segment was not exactly the forte of VIA chipset-based motherboards. Gigabyte introduced the GA-7VKMP-P based on the VIA KM266 chipset about nine months back and today it has almost 25% marketshare. The GA-7VM400M based on the KM400 chipset is the latest product in this category. Gigabyte has recently launched the GA-K8VT800M - AMD's first certified motherboard for AthlonTM64 processor. 

Ravi Pradhan, Country Manager, VIA Technologies says, "VIA chipset-based motherboards have about 50% of the motherboard market in terms of units and we are looking at consolidating this further by teaming up with motherboard vendors like Gigabyte."

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