Shipments of PC parts to drop in 2016
I've got a mate who used to work for Asus in Taiwan. Now he is a journalist and works closely with many companies. He posted this a couple of days back, figured I would post it here.
Asustek, Gigabyte motherboard shipments to drop 10% in 2015
DIGITIMES [Monday 14 December 2015]
With demand for PC remaining weak, Asustek Computer and Gigabyte Technology are both expected to see their brand motherboard shipments drop 10% on year, each shipping around 17 million units in 2015, while other small players will see much worse declines in the year, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.
Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS), Micro-Star International (MSI) and Biostar are seeing losses from their motherboard businesses, while China-based Onda reportedly will gradually phase out from the industry in 2016. The sources believe the global motherboard shipments will drop another 10% on year in 2016, forcing more motherboard players to quit.
Asustek and Gigabyte each shipped about 8.5-9 million motherboards in the first half thanks to their strong marketing and price cut promotions. However, Intel's releases of its new Skylake processors did not boost consumers' demand as expected and the two players only shipped less than five million motherboards in the third quarter. Since their shipments are unlikely to dramatic sequential growths in the fourth quarter, their annual shipments are only expected to reach between 17-17.5 million units each.
ECS also turned its focus away from its own-brand motherboard business. China-based motherboard player Onda, which ships about one million motherboards a year mostly to the mid-range and entry-level segments, is also rumored to quit the market.
And what he says about it.
> No word on ASRock, but I suspect dropping more than MSI as - if their marketing is anything to go by - it has collapsed in the last 18 months. Will be loss making also.
> MSI were at 6M a couple of years ago, about the same as ECS so will also be loss making. And despite their very successful Gaming branding it seems it's not helping their sales ultimately. Their gaming site is evidently a company in full pivot to notebooks though - their entire HQ building is now MSI Gaming branded. It'll be a slow burn out for them in MB in favour of Graphics and NB.
> No more ECS 'L33T' stuff. Mini PCs and OEM only I guess. Their company is in a bad way, I heard they had to sell their fancy HQ in a prime area of Taipei in the last few years (not sure if true).
> Biostar will be doing an Abit/DFI very soon. I'm surprised they lasted this long tbh.
> It'll be a two-company market in 3-5 years as Gigabyte/ASUS vacuum up what's left.
Sounds like MSI are really struggling. I can understand now why they didn't bother to release the 780ti Lightning and why they took so long with the 980ti Lightning.
It seems we are less easily fooled about "gaming" products than we were a couple of years ago. This is quite evident for me because I have now pretty much gotten rid of all of my gaming stuff and have bought regular office equipment. Chairs, headset and so on.
Half of the problem for me is that gaming products are usually far too expensive for the actual quality of the product being offered. IE, you think by spending £80 on a gaming mouse that you are buying a very solid peripheral that will last you for years. Of course, though, there is a caveat. All that the extra £50 has gained you is the fact that it has an LED or two on it, not that it is in any way, shape or form more substantial.
And then you have the utterly cringe worthy products like the MSI GODLIKE !. For me this board has been defaced and completely ruined by the fact they called it GODLIKE. Of all of the things that should ever be used by that name a god damned motherboard
is not one of them.
It's got to be one of the most embarrassing products I have ever seen.
I'm not too worried about Asrock. They have carved out a name of themselves by making boards that actual people can actually afford. So "gaming" moniker aside I think Asrock will still hang around just making nice cheap products that people can afford.
Asus IMO have just gotten better and better. However, like Asrock Asus do cater to the low end and IMO that is where the sales are going to be.
