Advertisment

ATI slashing prices and launching new products

author-image
CIOL Bureau
Updated On
New Update

By Pragati Simlote

Advertisment

2005 was a hard year for graphics and multimedia solutions designer ATI Technologies as it faced some engineering challenges with its high end product. But now, the company is gearing up to gain the lost ground in 2006. It is slashing its prices in order to raise price performance value of its products and is also launching new products in the market to capture the top end. The company plans to launch R560, R570 — two mid range products by mid 2006.

Buoyed by the growth in the PC and mobile market in India, ATI is bullish on the Indian market for growth. Globally, the PC biz is becoming a smaller share of ATI's overall business because of the growth in the console and the handheld market. In India, it is quite the opposite with the Indian PC business witnessing a growth of 30 percent year on year and cellphones also becoming ubiquitous.

ATI Technologies GmbH EMEA public relations manager Chris Hook said, “We are targeting markets like India where they are looking for that blend of price and functionality. I am particularly excited about the Indian and African market as companies are talking about one billion new cellphones by 2008 in India and Africa. Also with PC market booming in the country, these are the two segments where we see growth coming from.”

Advertisment

To take advantage of this growing opportunity in India, the company had acquired Hyderabad based

CuTe Solutions last year. Now the center employs around 100 engineers whose specialty is high scale integration of media co processors to deliver great audio and video to small handheld devices. The engineers apart from working on mobile solutions are also working on a project called RV 535 — which is a refresh of ATI's X1600 class of products.

They are also doing mainstream desktop design for the entire world, developing sound codec technology, etc. According to Hook, this also helps the company's worldwide product strength as well as develop products which would be successful from cost, features and functionality perspectives in India.

The company is also in the process to double its Hyderabad center headcount. Hook said, “We want to grow but most important is to get the best people. Lots of patience and investment is required in attracting the right kind of people. We are bullish on the Indian market which can be seen in the kind of investment we are doing in training of engineers, sales and marketing, R&D, channels programs, etc.”

Speaking about the company's product portfolio, ATI Technologies country sales manager for India Rajshekhar Bhatt said, “Around PC platform, we have four segments where we are present. These include integrated graphics segment - motherboard with on board graphics, discrete graphics i.e. the standalone graphics, Workstation products and all in ones — like the ones used in media center.”

- CyberMedia News

tech-news