Just like analysts predicted, there will be no Christmas surge in demand this year, as a result, almost all the companies involved in computer hardware business suffer the decline in sales to both retail and OEM channels. Mainboards, graphics cards, CPUs and other necessary devices needed to build a computer are usually bought by system integrators starting from late October and last till early to mid December. Due to unexpectedly low demand, a lot of vendors now have to state that their sales are to drop this month compared to October. Among the others, there are Taiwanese leading mainboard manufacturers, as I read over at DigiTimes, who also suffer from the weak market these days.

They say that the first-tier mainboard makers, including ASUS, ECS, Gigabyte and MSI are likely to experience a 10% decrease of their mainboards sales on average. The second-tier companies, like Chaintech and DFI, also suffer from the lower demand and predict that their revenues may drop a bit. A lot of companies now try to take additional actions in order to force the revenues to stay on the current level. For instance, numerous computer components producers now try to make and sell consumer products like barebones and set-top-boxes in order to boost their financial results.

There will be even tougher times for mainboard manufacturers in the first quarter. The demand on computer components is usually low in the beginning of the year and in the first quarter 2003, the makers will also have to clear-out a lot of existing products, since the brand-new Intel Pentium 4 and AMD Athlon 64 platforms are to be launched in the first half of the year.