Some of the more interesting conference call notes:
* New products (ones that started shipping in Q4) contributed to 50% of revenue...9700 the most, followed by 9000 and 9000 mobile parts. About 10% of revenues were from the integrated segment. Notebook revenues were about 1/3 of total revenues.
* Aggressive pricing on one desktop product contract (not specifically mentioned, but one big specific customer) contributed to lower than expected margins. ATI was not able to reduce costs for that part as expected. (Sounds to me like it's the 9500/9500 Pro...probably the shipping the 9700 PCB design on initial 9500 products?).
EDIT: On second thought, I don't think 9500 should have really contributed to 1Q revenues, so that's probably wrong. Perhaps the missed cost reduction is having to produce 9700 PCBs with more layers than expected? ATI hasn't publically commented on 9700 PCBs, but I think 10 layers is the rumored number, though ATI probably wanted to get it down to 8....
* One other major contributor to lower than expected margins was higher than expected cost of one new particular type of packaging for mobile chips. (Specific packaging type not mentioned, but presumably it's the packaging with integrated memory).
* "On track" to deliver "next generation" of prodcuts this spring. And then set to "break all the rules again" like they did this past summer. (Not clear if they are referring to breaking the rules with the spring line-up, or if he meant ready to break the rules again the following summer, sounded like the latter though.)
* Because the higher cost 9700 and 9500 are so popular (actually more than they expected), the unbalanced product mix contributed to lower gross margins.
* 80% of units this quarter were chips, not boards. (More migration away from board level products).
* DDRII is possible with 9700. However, it appears that from a cost / benefit point, DDR-II doesn't look viable in the near term for use with 9700. (Reiterated that the 256 bit bus allows them to use standard DDR and get required performance.)
* Range of products coming in spring (1st half '03): Integrated, mainstream, and high-end. Acknowledged that includes some on 0.13u...in which he associated "notebook" with. (I assume that to be RV-350 based). Was reluctant to match up or acknolwedge code names for chips with future products.
* Making good progress with 0.13, and don't see any impact from a margin standpoint due to migration to it.
* PDA Market: have two customers shipping today, they have several new design wins for next-gen PDA market, but won't see revenues from that until 2H 2003, when the PDA manufacturers ramp production of those products.
* Excellent relationships with both TSMC and UMC. Using both foundries is nothing new for ATI.
* Q: Will NV30 affect penetration of R-300 products? A: Well, you'll have to consider that we'll have a new spring line-up refresh against GFFX line-up...
