On Nov 25, 2004, at 12:43 AM, Chen Xiao Fan wrote:

> The reason why Atmel is losing money may be due to what REB said
> in his post. :) I wonder if they are just using their low cost
> to lure customers and then obsolete all their MCUs in two years.
>
I don't think microprocessors are enough of Atmel's market to contribute
much (one way or another) to their bottom line.  They're losing money
cause they're trying to be a player in the nonvol memory market where
competition is WAY beyond "fierce."  (I have not done the actual 
business
analysis, though.  Just guesses...)

Their "rapid phasing out" of products doesn't worry me TOO much; they
have been replaced by better products (in general) that are pretty
compatible.  Not terribly different than microchip going from A to B
versions, and smaller than going from 16f to 18f families.  I understand
this could be a problem for very large companies, but consider also that
Atmel doesn't have ROM or EPROM AVRs, so those companies weren't their
target market to start out with.

New Atmel products haven't had the excitement of the 10F PICs, or the
cleverness of the 16F54/etc, or even the niche-filling capability of
the MSP430.  They seem a bit unfocused; like they originally decided
that they were going to introduce a processor line to compete directly
with PICs, only to have the PIC line get much bigger, and to get 
distracted
by the "mega" possibilities that were outside their original target.
In some ways, it seems like a major benefit of the AVRs has been that
they've motivated microchip to make improvements along lines that they
might otherwise have neglected.

BillW

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