Taiwan's VIA eyes 15 percent share netbook chip market

TAIPEI (Reuters) - VIA Technologies Inc, Taiwan's largest designer of PC processors, aims to grab at least a 15 percent share of the global netbook chip market this year, as it will supply more netbook brands later this year.

Epan Wu, director of VIA's CPU product marketing department, told Reuters on Friday that VIA's platform of processors and chipsets would go with new netbook PCs to be introduced by a new vendor in the second quarter.

"We had 15 percent of total netbook (chip) shipments last year and we hope we can at least maintain that level this year," Wu said.

The remaining 85 percent market share is dominated by Intel Corp, whose Atom chips go with the bulk of low-cost, mini netbooks sold for as little as $300 now.

"There will be some more clients in the second half," said Wu, who declined to identify the new clients.

"This year's growth in netbooks will be much bigger than last year. It will be very good if we follow that growth."

Hewlett-Packard and Samsung Electronics have launched their netbooks, powered by VIA's central processor units, the brains of a PC, which work with chipsets designed to reduce power consumption and save battery life in PCs.

(US$1=T$33.8)

(Reporting by Baker Li, Editing by Jacqueline Wong)