Motherboard players act passively about outcome of the market
Here is an interesting editorial about how motherboard makers are reacting to the current state of the PC Market.
With PC demand remaining weak and the PC DIY channel continuing to experience decreased sales in the first quarter of this year, motherboard and graphics card players pointed out that the market is already in a phase of decline and most players are mainly waiting for competitors to quit the market or turning to focus on other applications in order to survive.
The PC DIY channel has seen dropping sales during the past two years and the situation is especially worsening in China and this has greatly impacted motherboard players. To maintain their profits, most players have turned to focus on the gaming sector to push mid-range and high-end motherboards.
They go on to talk about what companies have prepared for the remainder of the year and even mention how NVIDIA seems to be doing well despite the decline in demand. This is likely due to the success of Pascal and the demand that has been created with the new GPU.
However, Nvidia has greatly benefited from the graphics card market during the past two years despite the market also seeing falling demand. Since Nvidia has a dominant share in the market, it has gradually become influential with its downstream graphics card player partners in terms of giving supply priority, pricing, marketing and product designs.
Motherboard and graphics card players are also concerned about Nvidia's Founder Edition product line and believe the GPU giant is looking to compete against them for the most profitable sector, despite Nvidia having refused such a claim.
It isn't likely that NVIDIA will go back to building motherboard chipsets again. Personally I believe their next step will be expanding their mobile market share and offering more in the way of small device processing and whatever it is they do for gaming. Honestly I'm having trouble following what NVIDIA is doing on the gaming side and the ecosystem they are creating around shield.
One thing is for certain, RGB might be easy to market but, I believer real enthusiasts are getting a little tired of it.
Related Web URL: http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20170421VL201.html?...
