As the chipset market grows, companies like Intel Corp., VIA Technologies and Silicon Integrated Systems lose market share. Meanwhile, originally graphics chip designers ATI Technologies and NVIDIA Corp., who are now aggressively penetrating the core-logic markets, win ground and increase their shipments.

Mercury Research, a market tracking firm, forecasts that in the fourth quarter of 2005 shipments of chipsets for personal computers (PCs) will increase 7% to 74.2 million units. At the same time, Goldman Sachs forecasts that the shipments will continue to go up 0.6% in the first quarter of 2006. However, the shipments may fall 9.1% in the second quarter on seasonal effects, according to figures published at DigiTimes web-site.

Market shares of ATI Technologies and NVIDIA Corp. have been steadily growing in the past quarters and are projected to capture further parts of the market while also increasing shipments until the Q2 2006, when the demand for PCs is expected to decline a bit. All the other players on the chipset market benefited from tremendous increase in demand for chipsets in Q3 and Intel Corp.'s inability to supply all its partners with core-logic products and managed to increase their both their shares and shipments.

Nevertheless, Intel Corp. also shipped around 41 million of chipsets in Q3 and is expected to ship approximately 39 million of chipsets in Q4, which is well above the company's typical output of around 35 million of core-logic sets per quarter. When the firm returns to its normal chipset shipments in Q1 2006, according to Goldman Sachs, its market share will plummet to about 47%, much below the company's 2 year maximum of 69%. Still, due to decreased demand for computers in early Q2 and launch of new chipsets, Intel's share will rise to 52% amid flat growth of supplies.

All other chipset designers are projected to enjoy shipments growth till the Q1 2006, but all of them, save for NVIDIA Corp., are expected to face declines in both shipments and market share in Q2, Goldman Sachs predicts.

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