If you prefer to talk about the sheer number of sales then ASUS is on track to take top spot with roughly 22 million units sold over 2014, a jump of over just 1 million from last year and 2 more than Gigabyte's predicted sales of 20 million units. ASUS will also hold on to the most profit this year, Gigabyte is expected to match last year's profit of about 97 million USD which falls short of ASUS' expected 130 million USD but that is not the whole story. Last year ASUS closed out with over 160 million USD profit which shows a significant decline in their profitability during the same period that Gigabyte's profitability remained the same. DigiTimes reports this as being due to increased spending by ASUS on marketing and price cuts on their motherboards. Is it possible that ASUS' once insurmountable lead in the motherboard market could be a thing of the past?
"Asustek Computer's motherboard shipments returned to six million units in the third quarter thanks to its aggressive price-cutting strategy, which helped the vendor slightly widen the gap with its major competitors Gigabyte Technology, according to sources from the motherboard industry. However, despite the fact that Asustek is estimated to ship more motherboards than Gigabyte in 2014, its profit growth may perform weaker than Gigabyte's."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- Heartbleed and Windows bugs don't make for an insecure cloud @ The Inquirer
- Graphics Card Coil Whine; An Investigation @ Hardware Canucks
- Pay-by-bonk chip lets hackers pop all your favourite phones @ The Register
- The TR Podcast 165: Game reqs get inflated, benchmarks get weird, and Asus nails the X99-A
I would like to see Asus make
I would like to see Asus make a Micro ATX motherboard with the socket X99-A!
This is x86 motherboards,
This is x86 motherboards, just wait until Google starts buying whole loads of those Tyan motherboards for its Power8 based server farms, U Sam, is purchasing some Power9 based kit with Nvidia GPUs(Volta) with the Power9s having the Nvlink to the GPU, and stacked memory, the whole thing tied together with Mellanox interconnect fabric. Asustek better get on board with some Power* based motherboards, there will be a booming business, first it’s the HPC/supercomputer market and next these licensed Power8s, will start to show up in more than just server SKUs, once the powre8/power* motherboard market starts to produce for the workstation, and PC market. OpenPower licensed Power8/Power* products from many sources will begin arriving in 2015, and it’s not just ARM in the IP licensing business anymore, there will be ARM, Power*, MIPS. AMD should make the low cost server market happy with its Sky bridge from x86 to ARM, at the swap of a chip, so that leaves Chipzilla with some very definite problems, in the server and mobile space. It’s not IBM per se, that Intel needs to worry about, it’s all those the will license the power8 from openpower and roll some server SKUs of their own, just look at what the licensed ARM designs did for mobile, especially the custom ARMv8 ISA running designs.
The next few years are going to be fun, maybe not so much for a certain monolithic CPU monopoly, but for raw innovation, mobile market style, in the HPC, server, and PC and laptop markets also! Don’t exclude the MIPS CPUs with PowerVR GPUs and some 64 bit FPUs from the MIX, of low power low cost scientific computing uses. The business for non x86 motherboards will be big in the next few years, as all the new licensed IP begins to hit the market! AMD’s skybridge chipsets will be very popular, in the one motherboard supports two different ISAs category, with the quick change of a CPU die, but the potential for Power* compatible motherboards is there also.
don’t have to feed this
don’t have to feed this troll… he feeds himself.
also enjoys writing books nobody reads.
Chipzilla called, they need
Chipzilla called, they need their underwear starched, get to it! Enjoying the down round brown rosette kissing that goes on in most monopolies, a little much are we! But it’s time for a refreshing shot of licensed IP/ISAs to bring real innovation and affordability to the server room, and computing as a whole! From mobile to uncle Sam’s supercomputer rooms, more affordable CPU/SOCs and more money remaining for R&D for the OEMs, not bled dry of funds by a certain CPU supplier, a supplier than needs to be taken down more than a few pegs! It is so enjoyable to see the entire computing industry embrace the licensed IP business model and regain control of its supply chain, to see the CPU/SOC design process so democratized and innovative, and the commodity pricing through fair competition that benefits the consumer, with rapid technological improvements driven by fair competition.
No more Milking and dribbling out of technological improvements, the market no longer relies on a locked down supply chain, as always in mobile, and now in the HPC/server room, a license will get so much more for so many.