Forbes: Nvidia is company of the year

Forbes business magazine has chosen Nvidia as its "Company of the Year" for 2007.

The publication noted that, in the past four years, Nvidia has come from a trailing position to dominate the "breakneck, highly lucrative graphics-chip business."

Nvidia GPUs were used in the original Xbox and are being used in Sony's PlayStation 3. As bandwidth becomes cheaper and ubiquitous, with consumers wanting 3D power for online applications as much as for gaming, the demand for graphics processors is expected to grow.

"The more content there is, the more visual interest there can be, the more processing horsepower people need," said Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang.

Nvidia owns 62 per cent of the market for desktop PC graphics cards, up from 57 per cent a year ago, according to Mercury Research. The company has also increased its gross margin from 29 per cent in 2004 to a current 46 per cent.

In the fiscal year ending in a few weeks, Nvidia will gross USD 4 billion, up 33 per cent, and net USD 900 million, up 50 per cent, according to Forbes. Since the company went public in 1999, Nvidia's shares have risen 21-fold, edging out even Apple over the same time period.

Forbes pointed to all of these accomplishments as the basis for awarding Nvidia the "Company of the Year" title.