>If you are looking for PIC type microcontroller at 2/3 of MICROCHIP price
>or less, take look at HOLTEK series of microcontrollers.
>
>
>I have been using PIC controllers for about 8 years, now I am moving from
>PIC to HOLTEK products with greate sadness. Technically and development
>support MICROCHIP has been greate but the product price keep on creaping
up.
>
>With HOLTEK I get an ICE + C-complier + IDE software for Under #150.00
>($225.00) (MICROCHIP #1200.00)
>
>HOLTEK Silicon is atleast 1/3 less than PIC even on 1off price.

Holtek is not the only one PIC cloner.
In 1999 we had visit from the Microchip's South European Sales office and
we discuss about them.
They claimed that the Taiwan court already have closed few Holtek Fabs, but
new ones have been opened immediately under different names.
We discussed they price policy and my question was why they keep the pirces
in Europe so high for volume quantities - we always get better quotations
for Microchip's products from Asian distributors. The answer was some
mumbling about the different market segments and so on, but actually I got
that they just trying to charge as much as they can so in the different
regions the prices are different. In Asia the competition and the volumes
are in times bigger than in Europe, so they can't sell there expensive.
Another issue is that the Asian stockists and distributors work with
smaller commissioning than the European ones.
BTW the price of original Microchip's PIC16C505 have to be around $0,45 in
volume - for compare the PIC cloner we use sells PIC16C56 at this price.

Keeping the prices high is the best way to grow up your competition.
It was very surprising for me to understood that the old and ugly PIC16C5X
series makes the main share in Microchip sales.

Tsvetan
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PCB prototypes for $26 at http://run.to/pcb