The industry was led into expecting a temporary reprieve from the months-long price war by the announcement from VIA Technologies of price rises on its P4X266, P4M266 and P4X266E chipsets. However, when Intel lowered the prices of its 845D, 845GL and 845E chipsets as scheduled, Taiwan's chipset designers decided that they had to adjust their prices to keep a competitive gap between themselves and the chip maker.
Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) has informed its clients that it will soon lower the prices of its primary SiS645 and SiS650 chipsets. The price differential is said to be US$2-3, the same as Intel's. With keeping market share as the company's top priority, it's no surprise that SiS would follow Intel to cut its product prices. Though the pricing strategy has indeed helped SiS reap great results from both the clone and OEM markets, it may also increase SiS's pressure in generating better profits.
VIA, though revising some chipsets' prices up earlier, has also been caught in the price-cutting whirl, especially in quotes for its P4X266A and P4X333 chipsets, the company's two major products for the P4-platform. It's believed that VIA's P4 chipset prices will remain the lowest in the current market, regardless of its final price cuts.
Source: DigiTimes