National Semiconductor Corp, which on Thursday posted a third quarter net loss of $27.2m compared with profits of $26.2m the year before, said that a drop in sales of its Cyrix microprocessors for the PC market was making it cautious about its next quarter.
NatSemi CEO Brian Halla cited uncertainties in the personal computer market as the reason for the caution. Unlike Microsoft Corp, which denied that it was seeing any weakness in the PC market on the same day, NatSemi said that it had seen reduced sales of Cyrix chips during the quarter. Cyrix concentrates on the low-end of the Windows-compatible chip market, currently the focus of intense competition between Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. PC motherboard related orders also declined, said Halla.
Overall, sales dropped 23% from $650.1m last year to $500.1m this year. Sales also dropped sequentially compared to the second quarter figure of $510.1m. But the loss was narrower than expected. Halla said that there were continued improvement in its other business lines, such as analog and wireless components, and that revenues from recent wins in the information appliance market would begin to show up in the second half of this calendar year.
