As a result of the lower-than-anticipated motherboard shipments, but firms are expected to get more aggressive in capturing marketshare from smaller players in the final quarter of this year. This means the motherboard price war is expected to grow even fiercer.
Neither Asustek Computer nor Gigabyte Technology is likely to be able to achieve their 5.8 million motherboard shipment targets for the third quarter, as demand in China remains weak and the retail channel's orders ahead of China's National Day holidays have been also worse than those of previous years, according market sources.
Asustek and Gigabyte are expected to ship around 5.6 million motherboards each in the third quarter, the sources said.
The two motherboard players originally expected Intel's new Haswell Refresh processors, 9 series chipsets and K series processors to trigger a replacement trend and help boost their sales in the second half.