Friday, February 10th 2012
Sterne Agee Downgrades NVIDIA
Once Company of The Year by Forbes, NVIDIA is now having a hard time convincing 111-year old investment firm Sterne Agee that it is as much of a company to look out for. The firm downgraded NVIDIA from its coveted "Catalyst Driven Idea List," claiming that NVIDIA lacks the kind of innovation looking into the foreseeable future, to remain in that list. Says Sterne Agee:
Sterne Agee's commentary continues.
Sources:
VR-Zone, Forbes
"We had put NVDA on our Catalyst Driven Idea list on January 3 ahead of anticipated catalysts at CES and Mobile World Congress (MWC). While there were some catalysts at CES with the quad-core Tegra 3 integrating Touch on its Ninja 5th core, CES also saw a Win8 Tablet prototype running an NVDA Tegra. While we believe there could be more catalysts with MWC February 27, we believe NVDA shares are fairly valued here. MWC catalysts could include Tegra 3 handsets with Icera baseband and some 7-10 tablets running Android Ice Cream Sandwich.
Overall PCs Continue to be Weak & New Tablet Ramps are Just Getting Announced - We believe near term PCs are seasonally weaker, and while HDD supply is improving, we believe PC demand continues to be weak. Also for NVDA, Tegra 2 into tablets is ramping down, and while the company could have new Tegra 3 design wins into tablets, we believe the production ramp on any new tablets in the April Q will not be as material.NVDA has been dull, since. This development adds to the pressure on the company to come up with a killer new product portfolio, and increased innovation. The full report can be accessed here.
Discrete GPU Competition -- With AMD ramping 28-nm Radeon HD 7970 which delivers 5-30% better graphics performance than competitor GPUs on the market, paired with integrated APU Llano and INTC's Ivy Bridge-Haswell, we continue to believe the core discrete GPU market could have some structural challenges."
23 Comments on Sterne Agee Downgrades NVIDIA
"It pays to have the fastest chip out there, be it GPU or CPU. Nobody is going to buy the 'balanced platform' bullcrap. Wall Street won't."
I think AMD has been making the right moves this past year. They can't compete with Intel in terms of CPU R&D and therefore can't compete in terms of raw horse power. But fortunately for them, there are a lot of people who don't really care what's running their little laptop or netbook or tablet or whatever. And by 'a lot', I mean the other 6.5 billion people in the world who get a nerdgasm just thinking about being able to have their own computer. Yeah, Intel has some tasty margins, but if you can sell ten times as many chips at 1/10th the price, it doesn't really matter.
There is some innovation (a lot) in GCN, but being first to 28nm and being first to obtain the derived benefits is not innovation.
Same reason that Nvidia got downgraded. They have not shown any innovation this last year that I can tell, they did evolve a lot of things. Even Kepler is looking like more of the same. And while it will posibly be a very good product, and they have released many other good prodcts, a very good prodct does not innovation make.
It's easy to make a powerhungry monster just to keep the throne, but for smart customer, it doesn't cut the chase.
We should quit jappin and wait for kepler... and that is it...
Anyway guys... are there any game in the market that you can not run sufficiently enough? What's the hurry.... ??
But statistically wise... nvidia will dominate the android tab market hand in hand with TI and even HTC claimed that 2012 phones will use many Tegra 3 solutions...
The second thing, this is nvidia's possibility to develop and strengthen ARM evolution as Windows 8 comes in and after a year we should se ARM based quad/octo core ultra books clocked for 3Ghz and it should chop anything more efficiently as old x86 code and nvidia will milk its money. They invest in R/D to catch up TI, Qualcomm and Samsnung. Adreno is in big trouble as an exATI division and has and old dx9 compatible core, they didn't evovle it. PowerVR rocks that is true... Broadcom is nice... but always a second role actor. Now NOKIA lives with WM that uses snapdragons, and there is some sort of trouble as big customer is lost...
Nvidia has no possibilities to rush in APU market, that will kill all low and middle end cards. And high end? Do you think they lack it? Simply there is no need to rush. There isn't much money from enthusiast market... but as soon middle end market will start to diminish because of APU (intel won't be sleeping also), they will be in real trouble.
They should fine tune their chips and not sell some half broken fermi chips again...
Sorry, how many times did they use that word? Some kind of corporate mumbo-jumbo buzz-word bingo?
Those guys need to get out of the office more.
Funny, isnt it... how various phrases and catch-phrases become prevalent in certain companies to such an extent they start using them with the outside world and expect common-folk to tkae them seriously. I bet they even used nonsense phrases like "catalystic analysis in the catalyst industries" at Sterne Agee just to sound posh and clevar.
Same as in CPU market... two large market players are simply not enough!! They are toying with us.
And Nvidia hasn't came up with anything new since G80... but we have to agree...prohibition of making own chipsets, and no possibilities to create their own ecosystem. They are desperately just grasping what they can...
And this PR? It is just a fake smile of a crying dragon...
9500/9700 Pro AIW, X800, X1950, 4870, 5870
Best AMD:
6950/6970, 7950/7970
Best Nvidia:
6800 Ultra, 8800 GTS 640, 8800 GTX 768, 560TI, 580.
Had the GF104 failed and followed in the steps of the GF100...the GF114 wouldn't have been the supreme performer it became.
But I'll concede one bit about the 104. It was flat out moronic for NV to limit SLI to just 2 GPUs. AMD had quad crossfire setups running with their 104 competitor. The GF104's strength really became apparent in SLI. NV should have drilled that home but I suspect it would have taken too much attention from the 480.
Best in performance is one thing, but really making an impact on the industry, that is another. I would agree on the rest of that list. But I would add the 6600GT/7600GT and the 3870. Not as performance kings but as some of the best boards which really became hits in their time.
3870 alone I would consider as the GPU which kept ATI in the game till 4000 series. I certainly see it as no coincidence that AMD chose to start the APU series in the 3000 numbers. Without Llano, the pit stain that is BD would have really tarnished the entire year for them.
On topic,
I do agree with the News Article. Every release of a card from AMD since the 4870 there has been some new feature. This has not been the same with NVIDIA.