NVIDIA shows signs ... [2008 - 2017]

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You guys realize this is a BB only thing right. What is all the "OMG they're screwing their partners" stuff about? Let's save the shock and awe for when they show up at Newegg :)
 
You guys realize this is a BB only thing right. What is all the "OMG they're screwing their partners" stuff about? Let's save the shock and awe for when they show up at Newegg :)

You make it sound like Best Buy is some exclusive, hard to find, boutique. However there are well over 1000 of them.

I'm sure there's a partner out there that is less concerned than the others, because I guarantee one of them is actually building these parts.
 
Full article is up at [H]: http://hardocp.com/article/2010/10/05/nvidia_enters_retail_direct_sales_at_best_buy/1

What AIBs are Thinking


There have to be a bunch of folks today that are wondering what the hell is about to be going on with their businesses. What does it behoove my company to be an NVIDIA-only vendor when NVIDIA will come and directly compete against me? Not only are we competing for customers now, we are competing for vendor shelf space and many other tangibles that have to be considered in retail. It has been confirmed by several AIBs that in order to become an "approved Nvidia supplier" and added to the approved partner list in North America one must supply Nvidia with sell thru data, marketing plans, costs, and forecast plans to continue to be an approved partner. Now that NVIDIA has all this competitive data it is actually moving into the same market to sell against approved partners? That just seems to be a bit of "dirty pool" there.

Kyle_Bennett HardOCP Editor-in-Chief, 13.4 Years
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Quote:
Originally Posted by b1m2x3
I have a friend who works in the video card industry. He says this is just due to excessive stock.

That is a tremendously uninformed opinion. If you have excessive stock, do you compete with the people currently selling your stock?
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You guys realize this is a BB only thing right. What is all the "OMG they're screwing their partners" stuff about? Let's save the shock and awe for when they show up at Newegg :)
BB only... for now. I don't see how this could be viewed as not being negative. Every Nvidia card they sell is an Nvidia card their partners won't be selling. Those same partners would probably wanted that BB account.

It's still a strange move considering Nv's history. They got all those 3rd parties, and grew, because 3dfx started selling their own branded cards.
 
I figured that Nvidia was selling the excessive stock themselves because their partners didn't want to buy the thousands of 220's & 240's (or whatever they were) they were forced to buy along with the Fermi's?
 
You make it sound like Best Buy is some exclusive, hard to find, boutique. However there are well over 1000 of them.

Do you really think BB is a big player in the global graphics card market?

BB only... for now. I don't see how this could be viewed as not being negative. Every Nvidia card they sell is an Nvidia card their partners won't be selling. Those same partners would probably wanted that BB account.

You're assuming that these aren't simply excess inventory that nobody wants. It's too early to start running for the hills.
 
You're assuming that these aren't simply excess inventory that nobody wants.
That doesn't make any sense. They're not entering a new market here. And unless they believe the power of the almighty Nvidia brand is going to significantly expand video card sales at Best Buy, then they're most likely to take away a sale from one of their current AIBs who already had shelf presence there. Who then will get stuck with the inventory and have to adjust accordingly with no net gain for Nvidia.

Thinking about it, I'd guess it was "an experiment". Looking simplisticly at it, having more than one AIB partner is a waste in more ways than one. Not only is there a middleman taking a cut, but they're also "inefficient" with lots of multiplied up business units competing against each-other for the same space. From a purely spreadsheet point of view, getting rid of them would be a total boon. The kind that gets loads of short term analyst love.

Of course, that's disregarding that selling video cards might not be all that easy. Distribution, logistics, retail presence, support, returns, whatever... Thus, they might just be dipping their toe in at first to see what the water is like.
 
Of course, that's disregarding that selling video cards might not be all that easy. Distribution, logistics, retail presence, support, returns, whatever... Thus, they might just be dipping their toe in at first to see what the water is like.

They've been selling Quadros in retail for ages, and have been selling 3D Vision packages in the consumer space for a while now.
 
You're assuming that these aren't simply excess inventory that nobody wants. It's too early to start running for the hills.
This "excess inventory" is stocked at AIB's too, who are now competing with NV as well. "Nobody wants" is pushing it, since 460 is one of the best selling NV cards, with 450 not far behind. Even if you dont care about it, partners do, a lot.
 
This "excess inventory" is stocked at AIB's too, who are now competing with NV as well. "Nobody wants" is pushing it, since 460 is one of the best selling NV cards, with 450 not far behind. Even if you dont care about it, partners do, a lot.

LOL

"sales" is pushing it already when describing the 450, really. But agreed, The 460 is their best seller.

(see the reservation i built in there :p )
 
Hmm, Toyota makes fantastic cars. The accelerator issue seems like a big smear campaign to me. You have any links with proof that the problem was real, and not made up?

P.S. Tests by "Car and Driver" proved that vehicles stop fine with the accelerator smashed to the floor.

http://www.caranddriver.com/features/09q4/how_to_deal_with_unintended_acceleration-tech_dept

That is nice and all, but you can provide the proof. Wikipedia isn't proof. I happen to know they had a real problem. That is why they did a recall. Companies don't do imaginary recalls where they at great expense replace faulty parts. Now they might do a fake recall to reprogram ECUs, but never to replace a physical part.
 
If Toyota shows signs of strain, it certainly deserves its own thread, but unless they intend to buy NVidia or something, that thread isn't this thread, because this isn't Sparta.
 
Heh, "Built by Nvidia"... 3dfx actually built their own cards. But to claim that a card built by Foxconn was built by Nvidia? Funny...

Hopefully they are smart and keep it small and mostly limited to certain retailers (like that ATI branded card at Futureshop Canada). If they try to go whole hog with aims of being the primary or only card provider, that doesn't exactly have a good track record in the past 15 years. 3dfx when they decided to be the sole provider. Matrox. ATI before they decided to rely primarily on AIBs. Etc...

That Hard|OCP link seems to indicate they're going to avoid stepping on "most" AIBs toes by pricing the cards sky high and then hoping that it being "built by" (LoL) Nvidia with premium support (out of India) will be enough to charge a premium for the products. After all 299 USD for a stock clocked reference GTX 460? Sure PNY charges that it seems, but they aren't exacly a volume leader.

It's a rather weird situation they are in. If you price competitively, you risk alienating and potentially losing your AIB partners. If you price too high, you aren't exacly going to sell many cards.

Regards,
SB
 
Personally I don't know how they can list them as built by nvidia anyway without getting sued over it or something.
 
Hmm, the last thing I just thought of. And I really hope this isn't the case.

But I hope they aren't doing the same thing that Media Vision did with their Pro Audio Spectrum line of cards back in the early/mid 90's. Great cards, but they just couldn't compete on volume or name recognition with the Soundblaster cards.

So, in order to reduce inventory and boost share prices by appearing to have a much larger market share, they "sold" cards into the channel which they then stocked in a warehouse never to see the light of day. It was a huge scandal at the time.

I seriously doubt Nvidia is doing anything similar. But it brought Media Vision to mind when I see things like: Trying to move excess inventory. High prices. One of the models involved is in theory their highest volume product. Marketing your own brand allows you to stuff the channel with undesirable chips. Etc.

Speaking of which if this is intended to move inventory that isn't selling, what's it going to do to GTX 460 supplies?

You have a situation where either...

1. GTX 460 isn't selling near as well as most of us think it is and there's inventory building up. I find this doubtful.

or...

2. In order to have a complete lineup you HAVE to include the GTX 460, which means your AIB partners are going to get squeezed on the only high volume part they can reliably sell. Well assuming Nvidia can move a lot of units at a 299 USD price point.

Regards,
SB
 
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