14 DAY TRIAL // Since the year 2011 is ending, rumors, reports and announcements about what IT players expect from 2012 are trickling in and as part of quite the steady stream too.
This time around, it is ASRock's probable fate that users can catch a glimpse of.
The company itself set the shipment target for next year, or at least this is what Digitimes says has happened.
The company is known for two things: making motherboards and selling HTPCs (Home-Theater Personal Computers).
The latter of the two has the lower significance to ASRock's ultimate finances.
In fact, the importance of ASRock's HTPC sales is minimal, as the company doesn't think the systems will account for more than 10% of its revenues.
That means that motherboards will do most of the financial work, hinting at big sales figures.
True enough, ASRock intends to ship millions of those things, 10 million in fact, between January and December.
That would mean a 13.3% rise, on-year, what with 2011 shipments set to total 7.8 million.
It should be noted that the company didn't actually meet its estimate for 2011, so the same could happen in 2012.
After all, it hoped to ship 9 million for 2011, not 1.2 million under that mark.
Should the Taiwanese company succeed in rising up to its own challenge next year, it will become the third largest vendor of such things based in that country (ASUS and Gigabyte will be above it).
So far, ASRock has succeeded in challenging Gigabyte and ASUS by offering products which, though similarly-endowed with performance and features, sold for less, on average.
This tactic of reliance on a good price-performance ratio is what may, in the end, turn it into a true third competitor and, perhaps, propel it above the third spot in the years following 2012. Price wars may or may not ensue.