Nvidia Corp. said that it had no plans to sell graphics boards under its own trademark in Europe. Although Nvidia recently started to supply select own-brand graphics boards to Best Buy stores in the U.S., the company believes it makes no sense to approach European retail chains with similar products.

"We have no plans to do that outside Best Buy stores [in the U.S.]. It is a unique marketing initiative with Best Buy," said Bryan Del Rizzo, the head of marketing department of GeForce and consumer desktop products at Nvidia.

There are a lot of retail chains in Europe that sell electronics. Moreover, although in the U.S. virtually all customers with knowledge of the graphics cards acquire them in online stores, in European countries there are customers, who actually buy graphics adapters in retail. Moreover, in countries like the Russian Federation, Ukraine or the Republic of Belarus almost all the hardware is bought in retail. This ensures that potential Nvidia-branded graphics boards could see success in at least some countries of the region.

Recently Life goes on and recently Nvidia initiated selling graphics cards under its own brand in Best Buy stores in the U.S., following the example of 3dfx and ATI.

Nvidia’s decision to try the same business model as 3dfx and ATI seems to be very strange, given cut-throat competition on the market of graphics cards as well as the fact that Best Buy is hardly a place where the vast majority of customers are getting their graphics cards. Moreover, competition with its own exclusive partners means that those companies no longer have to be loyal with Nvidia and try their luck with competing ATI Radeon graphics chips from Advanced Micro Devices.

Considering the fact that Nvidia does not own production facilities to produce graphics boards in large quantities, the company outsources production to Foxconn Electronics into China and call center support to India.

Tags: Nvidia, Geforce, Business