Gigabyte having hard time in notebook and phone markets

DigiTimes heard rumors that Gigabyte is having trouble with its notebook and smartphone businesses. The company's motherboard division is reportedly performing strong but the other units have trouble picking up and may still suffer losses this year. Fortunately, Gigabyte's video card and server business are doing well. The company is expected to ship fewer video cards this year but profits will grow due to a better product mix, and the server business recently landed orders from Eastern European telecom carriers.

In early 2014, Gigabyte established an independent brand Aorus for its gaming notebooks and peripherals, but the brand's sales performance was weaker than expected despite the vendor's aggressive investments and R&D. With notebook and tablet demand staying weak, Gigabyte is still unlikely to be able to gain profits from the businesses in 2014, the observers said.

Gigabyte is currently also having difficulties boosting its handset shipments. Gigabyte shipped 300,000 handsets in 2013 and its handset models mainly ran on Qualcomm and MediaTek's solutions for Eastern Europe, Middle East, Taiwan and China. Gigabyte originally expected to ship 400,000-500,000 handsets in 2014, but is unlikely to achieve its goal, the sources said.