by Grigoriy Gubankov
05/15/2003 | 07:25 PM
Following the Taiwanese tradition, mainboard manufacturers reported monthly sales and shipments figures for April. Compared to March figures, which were reported here, performance of all companies decreased. Exact figures can be seen in the following tables:
<%BANNER[article]%>First-Tier Mainboard Manufacturers' Revenues (million, USD) | |||
April | March | M/M, % | |
| ASUSTeK | 338.7 | 336.67 | +0.6 |
| ECS | 147.7 | 145.9 | +1.3 |
| MSI | 131.3 | 172.3 | -23.8 |
| Gigabyte | 63.5 | 91 | -30.2 |
First-Tier Mainboard Manufacturers' Shipments (thousands of units) | |||
April | March | M/M, % | |
| ASUSTeK | 1850 | 1850 | - |
| ECS | 1150 | 1200 | -4.2 |
| MSI | 1100 | 1600 | -31.3 |
| Gigabyte | 850 (estimate) | n/a | n/a |
As you may see, the results of competitors are not similar. It is easy to conclude, that each of them has different explanations of poor performance.
ASUSTeK, for example, failed to achieve sales target of 2 million units due to decline in orders from HP and saw a decrease in revenues of its Taiwan-based division by 17.7%. However, ASUS’ China holding company reported record sales, thus, aggregate financial and shipments figures are practically flat, compared to the previous month.
ECS posted a decrease of sales for mainboard and notebook division, but tripled sales of "EZ-Buddie" mini-barebone systems drove financial results to be nearly the same as in the previous month. Shipments, however, have decreased by 4.2%.
MSI saw its April shipments declined by nearly one-third, compared to March, while the sales were down by a 23.8%. We have no information about causes of such strong decline, but considering MSI large dependence from OEM orders, declining ASUS’ OEM sales, we can assume that the cause for MSI's shipments drop is an orders decline from large PC vendors, such as Dell or HP.
Gigabyte Technology, as usually did not release its shipments figures, but given company's concentration on the retail market segment, we can presume fierce competition and seasonal decline in this market segment as the main cause of Gigabyte’s lowering sales.