Motherboard players suffer an average profit decline of 20% in 2012

Monica Chen, Taipei; Joseph Tsai, DIGITIMES [Monday 17 December 2012]

Facing competition from notebooks and tablets, the PC DIY market continues to face declining demand, triggering motherboard players to compete fiercely over price to gain market share, but the strategy impacted their profits in 2012 with declines of 10-20% on year, while some players even had a drop of 40%, according to sources from motherboard players.

Asustek Computer is expected to ship 22-22.2 million motherboards in 2012, down slightly by 4-5% on year, but its profits from the business are expected to drop close to 20% on year.

As for Gigabyte Technology, although the company will enjoy an on-year shipment growth of two million units in 2012, the company is still expected to suffer an on-year drop in motherboard business' profit.

ASRock achieved a gross margin of 19.2% for the first three quarters of 2012, lower than 21.55% during the same period a year ago, while the company's net profit for the period also declined 21.2% on year to only NT$793 million (US$27.29 million).

Profit from motherboard business drop in 2012
Photo: Michael Lee, Digitimes file photo