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Asustek, Gigabyte push for annual motherboard shipment goal
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 Seeing the PC market is remaining weak in the third quarter, top-2 motherboard vendors Asustek Computer and Gigabyte Technology have both recently dropped their motherboard prices in Europe and China in the hopes to achieve their shipment goal for 2012, with Gigabyte estimated to ship 5.4 million units in the third quarter, only slightly behind Asustek's 5.8-6 million units.
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Lite-On IT sees decreased July revenues
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Lite-On IT, the largest Taiwan-based maker of optical disc drives (ODDs), has reported its consolidated revenues of NT$4.2 billion (US$140 million) for July decreased 11.3% on month and 22.9% on year. January-July revenues of NT$30.514 billion dropped 13.2% on year, according to the company.
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Sony Slips Further Into The Red
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Sony is halfway through an ugly restructuring period as it seeks to cut costs, consolidate markets, and turn its once-mighty television business around. That's a difficult proposition for any company, but the Japanese giant's recent earnings call was gloomy even under these circumstances. Modest upticks in Imaging Products and Services and Pictures were offset by heavy declines in gaming, home entertainment, and music. The company reported a $314M loss for its first quarter of fiscal year 2012 and cut forecasts for a number of markets.
Sony pinned part of the blame on continuing economic turbulence in Europe and America, but investors weren't willing to accept this as the sole explanation.
What the company refuses to do is admit that the Vita is dead on arrival.
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HP has won the lawsuit against Oracle
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We believe that HP has won the lawsuit against Oracle and that the judge has issued an injunction forcing Oracle to continue supporting the Itanium platform. Naturally, this has big implications for HP, Oracle and the general industry.
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Taiwan's growth is downgraded as its economy contracts
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"The economy contracted 0.16% compared to the previous year, the statistics agency said. Analyst were expecting slight growth.
The agency also cut its forecast for full year growth to 2.08% down from 3.03%.
Asian countries are reeling from a drop in demand from a key market, Europe.
China, another major trade partner for Taiwan, especially for many of its high-tech goods, has also seen its own economy slow in recent months.
"Given how weak Western markets remain, Beijing's loosening must start to lift mainland demand soon if Taiwan is to achieve a meaningful recovery in second half of 2012," said Donna Kwok from HSBC. "
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Motherboard players purchasing components jointly to save cost
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"Seeing weak Europe and the US economies, while emerging markets such as China are also suffering from weaker-than-expected demand, and tablet PCs are seriously hurting growth in the PC industry, some first-tier motherboard players reportedly are cooperating with second-tier players to jointly purchase components to lower their costs and counter rising raw material and labor expenses, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.
In addition to weak global PC demand, rising costs for key components such as PCBs and IC chips, as well as increasing wages in China are all impacting motherboard players' profitability. With the cooperation on component purchasing, the sources believe the players will be able to save an additional 5%, as costs for IC chips from makers such as Realtek to see significant drops."
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Motherboard players may see single-digit growth in 3Q12
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"Europe and the US markets are still suffering from economical turmoil and summer demand from China's PC DIY market has not fired up as expected so motherboard players are concerned that their sequential shipment growth in the third quarter may drop from the forecast 10-15% to a single-digit, with some players even having no growth."
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ASUStek to acquire MSI, ECS or Biostar?
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"As the global motherboard market has been seeing weak growth since 2005, Asustek Computer reportedly is considering acquisitions to further expand its economic scale in the motherboard market, but the company has refuted the rumors and said that it is seeing stable development of its motherboard business and has no plans for acquisitions or strategic alliances.
Currently, motherboard makers' shipment growths each year are mainly contributed by shipments that were snatched from fellow competitors; therefore, price competition in the motherboard market has never ceased with first-tier players such as Asustek and Gigabyte Technology which have larger resources, gaining market share from smaller players such as Micro-Star International (MSI), Elitegroup Computer System (ECS), ASRock and Biostar.
Sources from the motherboard industry pointed out that through acquisitions, Asustek is aiming to quickly expand its economic scale and cost advantages to further widen its gap with Gigabyte."
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News: Apples EPEAT withdrawal underscores disposable ethos
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In his latest blog post, TR`s Geoff Gasior examines Apple`s decision to pull out of the EPEAT, which sets standards for green electronics. Tree-huggers probably don`t have anything to worry about, but Apple`s march toward more disposable PCs is a troublesome development for enthusiasts."
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Motherboard makers see June revenue drop
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Looks like MSI is being hit hard in the motherboard arena... it saw a 15% drop in Jun 2012 motherboard revenue!! "Micro-Star International (MSI), Gigabyte Technology, Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) and ASRock saw revenues for June falling on month by 1.65-13.59%, according to the companies. Although shipments in June increased slightly, Gigabyte suffered a 1.65% on-month drop in June revenues due to decreased shipment of handsets and notebooks."
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Microsofts New User Agreement Bans Class Action Lawsuits @ NGOHQ.com
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When a customer in the United States has a dispute about a Microsoft product or service, many of our new user agreements will require that, if we can`t informally resolve the dispute, the customer bring the claim in small claims court or arbitration, but not as part of a class action lawsuit."
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Graphics Shipments Decline 3.38% Over Last Year
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Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, announced estimated graphics chip shipments and suppliers' market share for Q1'12.
The news was not good. AMD was able to grow shipments over last quarter by 0.3%, in a down quarter. Intel slipped 1.3% and Nvidia declined 4.5% from the last quarter.
Although this did not shape up to be a great quarter for the suppliers, it actually wasn't as bad as it could have been. We found that shipments during the first quarter of 2012 behaved according to past years with regard to seasonality, declining from the previous quarter; however, this quarter's decline (of 0.8%) was less than the ten-year average of 3.1%. If we use graphics as an indicator, the industry seems to be recovering from the floods in Thailand.
The quarter in general
* Total AIB shipments decreased this quarter from the previous quarter by 2%. (see Figure 1)
* AMD increased its market share to 37.8%, Nvidia's market share slipped but still retains a large majority at 61.9%. (seeTable 1)
* Year-to-year this quarter AIB shipments were down 16%.
* Over 88 million PCs shipped worldwide in the quarter, an increase of 1.8% compared to the previous quarter, (based on an average of reports from Dataquest, IDC, and HSI).
Normally, this quarter of the year is down, and this year's quarter was no different, but the decline is less than the 10-year average.
AMD introduced the new Radeon HD7900 series early in the quarter and as a result picked up market share.
Nvidia got off to a slow start in Q1 and cited two main reasons for the significant decline: The global disk-drive shortage caused by the flooding in Thailand had more impact on the mainstream GPU segment than anticipated. Some PC OEMs were reduced shipments. And the higher prices of disk-drives constrained some PC OEMs' ability to include a GPU in their systems.
Matrox has not developed a new GPU in years but has found clever and imaginative ways to leverage the part they have. Selling to the signage and industrial markets, some low-cost white box workstation builders, the company has completely disappeared from the consumer segment.
S3 is similar to Matrox, and is not investing any new R&D in designs since acquired by HTC for its patent portfolio.
The integrated graphics chips appeal to low cost segments of the PC market, namely corporate PCs and very low-end consumer machines. Low cost attracts buyers in these categories rather than graphics capability. Thus, entry-level machines use IGP. Embedded graphics processors are simply replacing integrated chipsets, and not having any impact on add-in graphics boards (AIBs), which are holding steady. However, the new embedded graphics processor from AMD, the A10 (Trinity) has shown very good performance and have replaced entry-level AIBs.
to year for the quarter the market decreased. Shipments decreased to 15.8 million units, down 2.95 million units from this quarter last year.
Pricing and Availability
The Jon Peddie Research's AIB report is available now in both electronic and hard copy editions, and sells for $1,500. Included with this report is an Excel workbook with the data used to create the charts, the charts themselves, and supplemental information. The annual subscription price for JPR's AIB report is $4.000 and includes four quarterly issues. Full subscribers to JPR services receive Tech Watch (the company's bi-weekly report), and are eligible for a 10% discount. Bundle packages are also available. For information about purchasing the AIB Report, please call 415/435-9368 or visit the Jon Peddie Research website at www.jonpeddie.com
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Buying advice: High-End Workstation/Gaming-PC @ ocaholic
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The following purchase advice is targeted at users who are looking for a High-End Workstation/Gaming PC. You should be aware that this recommendation results in quite an expensive system. All the products we mention we would buy ourselves."
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Foxconn chairman says Europe and US economy to worsen
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Economies in eurozone are really mired in terrible conditions currently due to the raging debt crisis, and the business environment will certainly turn sour in the US in 2013 after the presidential election in 2012, according to Terry Guo, chairman of the Foxconn Group.
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AMD Q1 2012 Earnings Analysis: Looking Back and Looking Forward
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It does feel like AMD is back on track and is working to be a strong competitor to Intel once again. But that particular journey has just started and is filled with pitfalls, and AMD has a lot to prove between now and their first 28 nm APU release in 2013. Still, the numbers are overall very positive, and AMD looks to have some very competitive products throughout the rest of the year in terms of APUs and GPUs. Time will tell if the Piledriver based units for AM3+ and the server space will live up to expectations though."
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| The best Guides by the best writers on the internet; PCstats Beginners Guides explain computers, software, and all those other wonderful things that cause you frustration.
Learn how to use your computer better, master the internet while protecting yourself, and know what to do when your hard drive kicks the bucket.
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