14 DAY TRIAL // Now that the world economy is on the rebound, companies can finally stop worrying about staying alive and are resuming their efforts towards increasing their international status. Of course, this always leads to more or less heated competitive behaviors, with more intense examples being AMD's accusation of bribery against NVIDIA, concerning PhysX, and NVIDIA's ongoing litigations with Intel. On the other hand, competitions are also very much alive on the motherboard market, where Gigabyte seems bent on deposing ASUS as a prime supplier of mainboards worldwide.
Digitimes reports that, while ASSUS is still in the lead when it comes to total motherboard shipments, it may not be able to keep its position for long if it doesn't find some way to contend with Gigabyte's tactics. Over the recent years, the latter has used aggressive pricing tactics and has created boards with well-rounded features.
This has increased its standing on the mainstream, with current estimates suggesting that Gigabyte's 2010 shipments, so far, amount to 3.1-3.3 million. These figures were reportedly confirmed by “sources close to Gigabyte” and are quite close to the 3.2-3.3 million of motherboards that ASUS is believed to have sold.
In order to distance itself from its rival, ASUS might lower the prices of its products, a move that, according to the sources of the report, might spark a price war in the mainboard segment. ASUS supposedly refused to comment on market speculation, but it did mention that it expected to sell about five million units over the first quarter of the ongoing year.
A price war between the world's top motherboard suppliers might lead to overall lower prices in this segment, which might, in turn, propel not just the marketing performance of this market layer, but also that of PCs. ASUS is said to be planning “to reshuffle staff in motherboard business unit” in order to come up with better marketing tactics.