14 DAY TRIAL // Just like in Gigabyte's case, MSI's financial results for August have begun to trickle their way to the web, and it seems that the hardware maker saw some decline of its own, though order volumes are supposedly starting to pick up.
As one may have expected, the weak economic conditions in Europe are, once again, one of the reasons invoked for the uncertainty regarding MSI's performance.
While demand in the US, according to a Digitimes report, was more or less steady, order volumes still only barely managed to pick up compared to what they were in July.
Also, demand in China proved to be less high than MSI expected for the summer, and this has, apparently, raised the possibility of a price war in the near future.
Basically, China's National Day holiday is approaching, which is one of the peak periods for the PC sales in that region.
Unfortunately, there is the very real possibility of this period proving weaker than in previous years, and this may cause the motherboard shipment ratio for the first and second halves of 2010 to reach 1:1.
For those interested in numbers, the revenues reported for August were down 0.47% sequentially, at NT$6.51 billion, the equivalent of 203.72 million American dollars.
Based on this performance, the IT player cannot make a clear prediction regarding its performance for the entire ongoing year.
Global shipments of graphics cards may drop by 10-15 percent and the ASP (average selling price) could become 30% higher than what was registered last year.
Another problem is that, with China's recent policies meant to control house and stock market prices, consumer demand suffered.
This was an especially troublesome development because demand in China is greatest for entry-level video boards. As such, overall demand in this region may drop 20-30 percent on year.
In other news, MSI is supposedly readying ruggedized motherboards and video adapters for the high-end market, though no specifics of any kind are given.