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Gigabyte overtakes Asustek as largest motherboard vendor

by Ryan Martin on 1 April 2015, 14:30

Tags: AsRock, ASUSTeK (TPE:2357), Gigabyte (TPE:2376), MSI

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The Gigabyte Z97P-D3 is one of the best-selling motherboards in the UK.

The first quarter of 2015 has now drawn to a close and preliminary shipment figures for motherboard vendors have emerged from Digitimes. The Taiwanese supply-side news agency expects Q1 to set the tone for a disappointing year. The industry's biggest vendors, Asustek and Gigabyte Technology, are both at risk of missing their 20 million unit shipments target.

According to calculations from upstream supply chain sources, Gigabyte shipped 4.7 to 4.8 million motherboards in the first quarter while Asustek, normally the largest motherboard vendor, shipped 4.5 million. ASRock and MSI are both expected to have smaller shipment numbers, 2.8-3.2 million for the first half, meaning approximately 1.4-1.6 million for the first quarter.

The disappointing numbers are due to falling desktop PC demand for the first quarter. Digitimes claims rising tablet and smartphone demand continues to cannibalise PC sales while in Europe the depreciation of the Euro is partly to blame. China, normally a bastion of strong demand, has seen PC sales reach saturation point as the market struggles to digest new inventory.

Due to poor channel sales the majority of motherboard vendors have been reducing their orders for the second quarter of this year. ASRock and MSI are in the process of adapting business strategies in the face of weakening motherboard demand. ASRock is re-orientating itself as an enterprise solutions company, developing products for the IPC server market, while MSI is focusing heavily on its gaming notebook business.

MSI's GT80 Titan SLI is the company's latest gaming notebook offering.



HEXUS Forums :: 27 Comments

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Well for many years I've only bought Gigabyte as IMO they are reliable boards and some get so old (when upgrading over time)……….I throw them away. So maybe others agree with me and more people buy them over other makes.
Same here. I have got very familiar with their BIOS (Please forget their 3D interface which wouldn't work with a wireless mouse) and all have been very reliable.
Mine puts out a lot of coil whine and loses power during stress testing at 3.2GHz (from 2.66GHz stock) but other than that it's been running happily for over five years. Had great experiences with MSI too.
Sounds about right. I almost always use Gigabyte mobos for my builds. MSI for laptops though :)

Whatever happened with the ‘issue’ of releasing higher-spec'd versions of their products for reviewers or down-spec'ing later revisions?
LeetyMcLeet
Whatever happened with the ‘issue’ of releasing higher-spec'd versions of their products for reviewers or down-spec'ing later revisions?

Last I heard was Guru3D's report that was 4 months ago now - http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/gigabyte-pushing-it-a-motherboard-revision-too-far.html

It's a difficult thing to investigate unless a publication, or individual, is willing to buy new retail boards themselves and compare to old press/retail samples, if they can even find them. I'd definitely be interested in seeing more though -a roundup of all motherboard vendors and what kind of changes different revisions entail would be a great read.