NVIDIA today officially announced that it would halt chipset development. NVIDIA’s spokesman Robert Sherbin told PC Mag in an email, “We have said that this market has a long healthy life ahead. But because of Intel’s improper claims to customers and the market that we aren’t licensed to the new DMI bus and its unfair business tactics, it is effectively impossible for us to market chipsets for future CPUs. So, until we resolve this matter in court next year, we’ll postpone further chipset investments.”

The computer manufacturer that will be affected most by this decision is Apple, as the company uses GeForce 9400M chipset in all its systems except Mac Pro. Apple will be updating its desktop lineup very soon and we will find out if the company decides to go with Intel’s chipset because of NVIDIA’s decision.

However, the most important decision that Apple will need to make regarding next gen chipset will come in Q1 2010, when the company will update its MacBook Pro lineup with 32nm Intel processors based on Nehalem architecture that uses new DMI bus. Apple can use Intel’s integrated graphics for lower end MacBook, but for MacBook Pro range it will need a better graphics card that can replace GeForce 9400M.