ConnectorGate
As if that wasn't enough, NVIDIA's shares took a dive when it announced its Q2 earnings were going to fall short of expectations, due in part to these price cuts, but also to a manufacturing flaw (ConnectorGate) that was causing some NVIDIA products to overheat and fail.
When NVIDIA eventually announced its Q2 earnings they revealed a loss of $120 million - NVIDIA's first for six quarters - which, it was admitted, was a result of increased competition from AMD and just under $200 million set aside to deal with the ConnectorGate crisis.
NVIDIA attempted to rally its fortunes, predicting is would take back the graphics performance lead this year, while at the same time insisting there was more to GPUs than just gaming.
However, NVIDIA's share price took another kicking when it emerged that its own shareholders were suing it, alleging NVIDIA knew about the problem a lot earlier than it had let on.
Further manifestations of the ConnectorGate incident continue to appear, including in Apple MacBooks, but crucially for NVIDIA these haven't sabotaged its most significant piece of positive news since the start of the year - that Apple is now making NVIDIA's new GeForce 9400M notebook IGP standard issue in nearly all MacBooks.
The revenue, kudos and exposure that comes with being embraced to the Apple bosom is considerable
This is a pretty big deal for NVIDIA. Initially because the revenue, kudos and exposure that comes with being embraced to the Apple bosom is considerable. But ultimately because Apple came to the conclusion that NVIDIA's IGP was preferable to Intel's - the incumbent IGP partner.
Furthermore, NVIDIA will be announcing a number of design wins on Intel based notebook PCs in the coming days and weeks. In other words it's stealing market share from Intel in the notebook IGP market. What makes this especially remarkable is that NVIDIA didn't even have a mainstream notebook IGP offering until the launch of the 9400M.
