Gigabyte reportedly axing up to 10% of its staff

Things are a bit of a turmoil for Gigabyte ever since a year or two, and it hasn't ended. Many people have already moved or lost their jobs, and now another round is in sight as reportedly Gigabyte is to cut away another 5 to 10% of its personnel and marketing costs for 2019.

At the time of writing, Gigabyte has not issued any statements. Gigabyte has been reorganizing for a long time now, and a lot of good people have moved into new positions and even at competing companies. A further decline in GPU and motherboard sales forced the company to take action, according to DigiTimes.

Gigabyte's motherboard business is expected to be the primary target for layoffs, while there have been no plans to cut workforce at the graphics card business yet, according to the market observers.

Gigabyte shipped around 2.2 million motherboards in the fourth quarter of 2018, with its 2018 motherboard shipments reaching 11.45 million units, down from 2017's 12.6 million and 2016's 16 million. For 2019, Gigabyte is expected to focus on maintaining its volumes at above 10 million units.

Gigabyte shipped around 3.5 million graphics cards in 2016 and 4.8 million units in 2017 thanks to strong contribution from cryptocurrency mining demand. In 2018, the shipments had been sliding every quarter, dropping from the first quarter's 1.2 million to the second quarter's 850,000, the third quarter's 750,000 and the fourth quarter's 700,000, returning Gigabyte's annual shipments in 2018 back to the level of 2016 at around 3.5 million units.