Posted on Wednesday, February 12 2014 @ 12:35 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
DigiTimes
heard Gigabyte is on track to ship five million motherboards in the first quarter of this year, giving the company a chance to surpass ASUS, which is also expected to ship around 5 million motherboards this quarter.
Gigabyte shipped over 20 million motherboards in 2013 mainly thanks to strong demand in China, which accounted for about 40% of the shipments, the sources said.
However, since the high-end motherboard sector is currently being dominated by Asustek, Gigabyte will need to strengthen its competitiveness in the sector in order to improve its profitability, the sources noted.
Gigabyte president Alexander Ma previously pointed out that the company will focus on pushing into the mid-range and high-end markets in 2014 to boost its product ASP and gross margins. He expects global motherboard shipments to drop 5% on year in 2014, but the company's shipments will stay flat or grow slightly compared to 2013.
Shipments of smaller motherboard makers like ASRock, MSI, ECS and Biostar are expected to decline by 10-15% sequentially in Q1 2014.
