ASUS and Gigabyte motherboard shipments lower than expected

Industry sources told DigiTimes that motherboard shipments are coming in lower than expected. ASUS and Gigabyte each shipped around eight million own-brand motherboards in the first half of the year and are now only expected to ship 18 million units in 2015, down from the original forecast of 20 million units.

Smaller motherboard makers like MSI, ASRock, ECS and Biostar are reportedly feeling the pain as ASUS and Gigabyte are still competing aggressively over pricing.

ASRock and MSI both shipped around two million motherboards in the first half and may ship less than six million units in 2015.

However, thanks to its gaming notebook product line, MSI was still able to achieve EPS of NT$1.12 (US$0.04) for the first quarter of 2015, only slightly lower than NT$1.15 from the first quarter a year ago.

ASRock is aggressively trying to expand its presence in the server and industrial PC (IPC) industries, but is currently seeing profit drop as the two businesses so far still have not yet had any major contribution.

Some market watchers expect Gigabyte to achieve EPS of around NT$3.20 in 2015, lower than NT$3.82 in 2014 due to weakening motherboard shipment performance and the fact that its other product lines only performed mildly.