14 DAY TRIAL // Over the course of 2009, IT companies were forced to live with the dread that they might just go though an experience as dismal as the one brought about by 2008. This made many IT players take their chances with growing markets in order to stabilize their income in the short term. Fortunately, the year ended with a far less unfavorable performance than that everyone expected and companies managed to actually score profits.
Biostar shipped about 6.02 billion motherboards throughout the entire year, which represents a 23% on-year improvement. Conversely, revenues amounted to NT$7.94 billion, up 23% on year, and net profits totaled NT$407 million. Additionally, graphics-card sales also managed to somewhat rise, to 360,000 units. Basically, the company managed to get back on its feet quite readily after the weak period of 2008.
Gigabyte seems to have performed even more admirably. The Taiwanese company sold about 18 million platforms, out of which 17.01 million were branded products. All in all, motherboards accounted for no less than 65% of the hardware supplier's total yearly revenues. Of the rest, 10% were brought in by graphics cards, whereas 10-15% were brought in by server and storage equipment.
The remaining shares were composed of handheld consumer electronic devices and mobile computers. To be more specific, Gigabyte shipped 300,000 notebooks last year. As for the plans set in motion for the ongoing year, the player hopes to drive laptop sales upwards, to about 400,000-500,000 before 2010 is over. Finally, the targeted level of motherboard shipments is of 20 million, out of which 18 million will be own-brand.
All in all, 2009 appears to have turned out for the better, if not for the best. No doubt, companies expect the new AMD and Intel chipsets to boost demand, while the new graphics cards and CPUs are bound to drive PC sales upwards.