X-bit labs

ELSA Goes Bankrupt, NVIDIA Loses European Market.

Category: Other

by Anna Filatova

[ 02/27/2002 | 04:00 AM ]

Yesterday the German ELSA announced its bankruptcy and the court of Aahen appointed supervisors to put up the company’s assets, intellectual property and storage stocks for sale. This happened after ELSA had failed to find common language with the creditors to whom the company owned 38 millions euro, neither had it found a new investor.

ELSA still has some interesting things that may attract many graphics chip and card makers. First of all, ELSA was the only manufacturer of professional graphics cards based on Quadro series from NVIDIA. Then, ELSA has a number of unique innovations in drivers for graphics cards of this class. Secondly, ELSA is a widely promoted brand in Europe and it can be of interest for American companies that want to enter the European market.

At the same time, the story with ELSA may cause serious troubles to NVIDIA. Lately the market of graphics cards based on NVIDIA chips has dramatically shrunk. First it was Hercules to stop cooperating with NVIDIA, now it is ELSA leaving the market, while both the companies have a large dealer network in Europe. All this has forced NVIDIA to promote its American partners in Europe. First of all, it is the U.S. sales leader, Visiontek, which is most likely to buy ELSA now. In the beginning of March we’ll learn who will continue manufacturing professional graphics cards based on Quadro chips.