DIY motherboard shipments reportedly fell 21.7 percent this year

Sources in the Taiwanese supply chain told DigiTimes that shipments of motherboards for the DIY PC build market totaled just 54 million units this year, a staggering 21.7 percent drop versus the year before. The smaller motherboard makers seem to have bared most of the brunt as market leaders ASUS and Gigabyte slipped less than 10 percent due to fierce price competition.

ASUS and Gigabyte are estimated to each hit DIY motherboard shipments of 17.1 million to 17.5 million units this year, with limited hit to profitability due to high volumes of mid-range and high-end models.

ASRock and MSI on the other hand are projected to ship 5 million DIY motherboards this year, a drop of over 20 percent and 10-15 percent, respectively. A bit further down the ladder you have ECS and Biostar, each are estimated to account for 2.5 million units of the DIY motherboard market. According to the DigiTimes report, Biostar's DIY motherboard division is running at an operating loss and ECS is rumored to phase out its DIY motherboard lineup.

Chinese motherboard maker Colorful is one of the smaller players, with volumes of around 2.2 million DIY motherboards this year, and is rumored to suffer from an operating loss on this product lineup due to the high proportion of low-end models. The same is true for other Chinese motherboard makers like Onda, Maxsun, SUPoX and Yeston, which are all expected to suffer operating losses from the DIY motherboard market.