Asustek, Gigabyte share over 50% motherboard market

Here is an interesting statistic.  Both Asus and Gigabyte (together) make up more than 50% of the motherboard market when you consider them as a brand.  (My assumption is that they didn't count OEM products coming out of their factories)

Asustek Computer and Gigabyte Technology shipped 22 million and 19 million motherboards respectively for own-brand sale in the global DIY market in 2012, together occupying 51.3% of the total global shipments of 80 million units, according to Taiwan-based motherboard makers.

ASRock and Micro-Star International (MSI) shipped 7.7 million and five million own-brand motherboards respectively in 2012, the sources indicated.

There were an estimated 28 million own-brand motherboards shipped in the China DIY market in 2012, accounting for 35% of the global total, the sources noted. Asustek shipped nearly nine million units and Gigabyte shipped about eight million units, resulting in a combined market share of 60.7% in China, the sources indicated. The remaining shipments of about 11 million motherboards were mostly shared by ASRock, MSI, Biostar Microtech International and China-based Colorful Technology and Onda, the sources said.

48 million motherboards shipped?  Makes you wonder who is buying all these boards and where the Rampage and UD7 boards fall into this metric.  I mean they tend to sell out rather quickly.  So, are they really making only 200 of each? or are these boards really in high demand??

These numbers also shed a little light into the PC market as a whole.  Assuming that more than half of those shipments are to replace aging systems you can assume that people are still building their own computers, either on a personal level or as a larger organization.  Also assuming that the PC market is "flat" indicating no growth or decline will it be the motherboard makers that cause the downfall of the PC market or will some outside factor play into it?

Too many questions, maybe Darren and I will address it on the next podcast. 

Stay tuned! 

Related Web URL: http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20130207PD216.html