NVidia considers an across-the-board overhaul of its marketing strategy
To help casual consumers who may not be able to track every code name and official product launch, GPU maker NVidia now says it's considering plans to simplify its product range.
The news comes from the company's Vice President of Business Content Roy Taylor, in comments made recently to GamesIndustry.biz.
NVidia's attempt to become more consumer friendly is a challenge it understands must be tackled to broaden its appeal to consumers not yet become acquainted with the brand, which is still linked in most buyers' minds to graphics cards. Consumers accustomed to low-cost computers are typically de facto users of Intel's integrated GPUs, and it's this market that NVidia now wants to crack.
A glimpse of NVidia's Web site reveals the company has six different desktop lines of video cards, with some lines, including its popular GeForce series having multiple series subsets.
For example, NVidia will launch its GeForce 9900 video card -- code name GT200 -- series just a few months after launching the 9800 GXT graphics card, and the 9900 GTX will likely replace the 9800 GX2 in the future. Last month, NVidia re-announced its GeForce 9800 GX2 to accompany the GeForce 9800 GTX and GeForce 9600 GT GPUs.
NVidia has yet to release a roadmap for when this consolidation will begin taking place.
The Santa Clara-based company's internal product range modifications will come at a time when its first quarter profits rose 34% but still missed analyst outlooks. After Q1 ended on April 27, NVidia reported income of $176.8 million, or 30 cents per share, but financial analysts anticipated stock profit of 38 cents per share.
NVidia remains in control of the GPU market at present, with AMD still having difficulty benefitting from its 2006 purchase of ATI. Recently, Intel and NVidia have traded barbs, with an Intel engineer claiming during the Intel Developer Forum that discrete graphics cards will eventually become "unnecessary" for consumers.
"The better question to ask is this...'Moving forward will there be a need for a high-end CPU?'...probably not," NVidia Director of Public Relations Derek Perez boldly predicted shortly afterward.