The increasing strength of Via Technologies Inc in the chipset market is becoming obvious as the firm announced that its production of chipsets for November would top 3.5 million. The Taiwanese firm, which farms out manufacturing duties to firms like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co and National Semiconductor Inc, is the second largest producer of chipsets in world, after Intel Corp. With the introduction of its Apollo PC133 chipset, Via has scored major customers such as Hewlett- Packard Co, Compaq Computer Corp and IBM Corp. Intel is in a legal dispute with Via over the introduction of the chipset and recently sued some of the firm’s smaller customers such as FIC, Everex and KMS.
