Analyst: NVIDIA to exit chipsets in 2009

According to an analyst with the Pacific Crest Securities, chipset manufacturer NVIDIA will stop making media and communications chipsets in 2009, representing 21 percent of the company‘s current revenue. While the Tuesday report notes that NVIDIA had flat-out denied similar rumors back in August, its partners AMD and Intel are both are breaking into the mainboard chipset business themselves, Intel with in-house efforts and AMD with the recent purchase of chipmaker ATI.

Further hints as to NVIDIA’s role as supplier allegedly come from VIA’s marketing chief, Richard Brown, back in August. VIA has made it clear it plans to stop making chipsets for PCs and instead continue system-logic development for its own processors. “We believed that ultimately the third-party chipset market would disappear,” Brown said at the time.

Also earlier this year, NVIDIA has posted losses related to its failing GeForce graphics cards, which overheated in systems and hurt the company's ability to stay in more than just the graphics industry.

Partly countering the claim is a rumor this weekend that NVIDIA is involved with Apple and may have a new nForce mobile chipset in MacBooks, though these reports have quickly countered that NVIDIA may simply be supplying graphics to these portables.