As a logical consequence of the slowdown in demand for PCs, the market for motherboard is experiencing a slowdown that affects all of its players.
Unsurprisingly, no constituent component of a PC was spared from this backlash of an explosion in demand during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic.
ASRock, ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI in turmoil
Highlighted by DigiTimes and Tom’s Hardware, the struggles of motherboard manufacturers are palpable. Previously mentioned, the backlash from the strong demand recorded in 2020 and 2021 translates into a drop in sales of 10 million units for the main Taiwanese manufacturers.
The previous generation of motherboards is obviously affected, but we also notice that the new generation models are struggling to convince. Thus, the AM5 platform does not meet with the success expected by AMD and its various partners, the fault no doubt of a sharply rising cost.
On the Intel side, the Z790 chipset specific to Raptor Lake processors is doing a little better, but the American company is betting more on the B760 – more economical – which is slowly coming to market.
-55% over one year for ASRock
The drastic drop in motherboard sales therefore concerns all players in the sector, but not necessarily with the same intensity. From the figures reported by DigiTimes, we see that ASRock is by far the most affected with an estimated drop of 55% over one year.
From 6 million units shipped in 2021, the company has grown to 2.7 million in 2022. For MSI, the results are hardly better with 5.5 million cards sold in 2022 compared to 9.5 million distributed in 2021, the drop is therefore around 42%.
ASUS is a little less heavily affected at -25% over one year, its sales dropping from 18 million to 13.6 million units. Finally, GIGABYTE is the company that is doing the best with “only” a 14% drop over one year: from 11 million cards sold in 2021, it fell to 9.5 million in 2022.
Source : Tom’s Hardware
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