Gigabyte Technology Has Hard Time with laptops and phones

Despite having strong performance in the motherboard business, Gigabyte Technology's notebook and handset businesses are still having trouble picking up and may still suffer losses in 2014, according to market watchers.

In early 2014, Gigabyte established an independent brand Aorus for its gaming notebooks and peripherals, but the brand's sales performance was weaker than expected despite the vendor's aggressive investments and R&D. With notebook and tablet demand staying weak, Gigabyte is still unlikely to be able to gain profits from the businesses in 2014, the observers said.

Gigabyte is currently also having difficulties boosting its handset shipments. Gigabyte shipped 300,000 handsets in 2013 and its handset models mainly ran on Qualcomm and MediaTek's solutions for Eastern Europe, Middle East, Taiwan and China.

Gigabyte originally expected to ship 400,000-500,000 handsets in 2014, but is unlikely to achieve its goal, the sources said.

In addition to the motherboard business, Gigabyte's graphics card and server businesses are also performing strongly. Though the company's graphics card shipments in 2014 are expected to drop 300,000-400,000 units from those of 2013, but profits will grow due to a better product mix, the sources said.

The company's server business has also recently landed orders from telecom carriers in Eastern Europe and should also boost the company's profitability. The company's Brix micro PC also achieved better-than-expected shipments, according to the sources.

Via Digitimes