Third Place as Motherboard Supplier Snatched by ASRock

It seems that Acer is not the only company that did well for itself throughout 2010, as ASRock also seems to have thrived, enough to actually secure the third spot as maker of motherboards.

Currently, ASUS and Gigabyte are the top two suppliers of motherboards, at least according to so-called sources cited by Digitimes.

ASUS managed to ship about 21.6 million branded platforms over the course of last year, allowing it to stay in the lead.

Granted, it failed to achieve its goal of 25 million shipments, but that still didn't stop it from getting the highest profits, of NT$8 billion, which is the equivalent of US$275.34 million.

Moving forward, the outfit hopes to sell 22.7 million units in 2011, about 5% more on year.

On the same business sector, Gigabyte sold 18 million branded boards, but its profitability was hampered by ASUS' competitive prices, even despite strong sales in China. Its own goal is to maintain sales at 18-18.5 million.

That said, ASRock managed a figure of 8 million branded boards, right ahead of Micro-Star International (MSI) and Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS). About 70-80% of them were for the mainstream and high-end markets.

2 million of the aforementioned 8 million were sold during the fourth quarter, the overall price was fairly low.

Apparently, even though the price points weren't the highest, gross margin was still maintained at 18-19%.

Basically, the company did well and it is expected that its Q1, 2011 shipments will either stay flat, sequentially, or rise by 5% (9 million units is the overall guidance).

MSI was behind ASRock with about seven million shipments, while ECS was more or less at the same level. Biostar sold about five million branded boards of its own, while Foxconn has already pulled out.

What remains to be seen is how the top 10 spots end up by the end of the ongoing year.