Gigabyte closes the gap in motherboard shipments against Asus in 2012

[Nelly]

Gigabyte to achieve growth in 2012 motherboard and graphics card shipments

Gigabyte Technology is expected to see its motherboard and graphics card shipments reach 18.5-19 million and almost 3.2 million units, respectively, in 2012, while the company's EPS for 2012 is also expected to reach NT$2.6-2.8 (US$0.09-0.1), according to market watchers.

However, despite the strong performance in motherboard and the graphics card businesses, Gigabyte will still suffer losses in both the notebook and handset businesses, the market watchers noted.

Gigabyte shipped 14 million motherboards in the first three quarters of 2012 with volumes in the third quarter reaching 5.5 million units. However, the company is expected to see a sequential drop of 15% in its fourth-quarter shipments to reach 4.67 million units. Breaking down Gigabyte's motherboard shipments in the fourth quarter by month, the company shipped about 1.6 million units in October and will maintain flat performance on month in November, but suffer a drop in December.

Since Asustek Computer is only expected to ship 22.2 million motherboards in 2012, the top-two motherboard vendors' shipment gap will narrow to 3.2-3.7 million units, down from around five million.

Gigabyte shipped about 2.9 million graphics cards in 2011 and 2.4 million units in the first three quarters of 2012. In the third quarter of 2012, Gigabyte shipped about one million graphics cards and is expected to deliver at least 800,000 units in the fourth quarter.

Currently, the motherboard business contributes about 60% of Gigabyte's revenues, while the graphics card business accounts for about 15%, the Internet communications product business 10-15% and the rest is contributed by other product lines such as notebooks.

Gigabyte's Internet communications product business is expected to have flat performance in 2012 with stable set-top box orders from Chunghwa Telecom (CHT). As for Google TV, since the device did not draw as much demand as expected, Google did not place any new orders with Gigabyte, the market watcher noted.

Gigabyte shipped about 200,000 notebooks in 2011 and the volume is expected to stay at a similar level in 2012.

Source

I guess poor customer service, and RMA support is finally taking it's toll on the competition. 

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

Thanks for the relaying of the information, I am sure many members will be interested. There are of course a great many different reasons why market share should shift and as you mention customer service and support is one of the most notable. This is somewhere that Asus has often been lacking especially in the time taken.

[bhavv]

Asus don't even handle direct RMAs in the UK. I emailed them over my dead rampage 3 extreme, and they said to contact the place I bought it from as that's how they do their RMAs. This only increases the time it takes - post back to retailer, they have to fill in a form and return it to Asus, Asus fix / replace and post it back to the retailer, then the retailer returns it to you.

Luckilly there were still some high end gigabyte X58 boards around for a good price, so now I'm just waiting for my new board to arrive.

Also another thing I found out from researching warranties after my board died - Asus's 3 year warranty starts from the motherboards manufacture date, Gigabyte's starts from the purchase date plus direct RMA service with a UK based repair centre. The only problem is I don't know if gigabyte have an equivalent to Asus's latest high end rampage boards, with the X58 stuff they were too slowwith getting such boards out.

[bhavv]

Hmm, seems that my information was incorrect and that Gigabytes warranties also start from the manufacture date.

If that's the case I'll just test my current board with the new power supply to diagnose, and return the unopened gigabyte motherboard wthin the 14 day refund period and wait for a replacement for my current motherboard

[autotech]

About two years ago i had a Gigabyte motherboard in a build i did for a customer. It was close to the three year mark from when i bought it so figured i would be out of luck and the customer didnt want to upgrade anything so i contacted Gigabyte support they request serial number and place and date of purchase.

I sent it in with a copy of the newegg recipt and it took them 2 weeks but they fixed it and sent it back. When i bought that motherboard i know it had been out for a year at least so if they went off manufacture date they wouldnt of fixed it under warranty. I also believe that is why they requested a copy of my recipt when i sent it in. BUT i found the following on gigabytes main site.

Warranty Effective On Date of Manufacture

GIGABYTE determines warranty based on the manufacture date. The manufacture date can be verified by the serial number found on the product. The first four digits after "SN" determine the year and week of manufacturing date. For example:

"4719331822101 SN082540084966" represents the 25th week of 2008