Worldwide brand motherboard shipments were 75 million units in 2013, but slipped below 50 million units in 2016 reports Digitimes today:
Since motherboard demand from China, which had been the main growth driver in the past few years, is dropping significantly, shipments are expected to remain in decline in 2017.
Gigabyte Technology is also expected to see its motherboard shipments drop below 13 million units in 2017. In addition to China's weakening demand, competition from Asustek has also grown fiercer, the sources noted.
However, Gigabyte is still expected to be able to keep its EPS at above NT$3 for 2017 thanks to rising sales from its graphics card business because of the cryptocurrency mining trend and server orders in the first half of the year. In the first three quarters of 2017, Gigabyte is expected to ship 3.4 million graphics cards, a level similar to that of the entire 2016.
Since Gigabyte is still in the process of reorganizing its business, and shadows have been cast over the cryptocurrency trend, the sources believe these issues could pose strong challenges to the company's operation in 2018.
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If you are stuck with Intel atm and plan to switch motherboards, might as well go with AMD--traditionally, AMD gets far more use out its sockets than Intel has been able to achieve thus far. And I'd imagine that current Ryzen x370 boards will likely also support the next iteration of Ryzen--Ryzen 2. As far as socket longevity goes, AMD is the clear winner there, imo.
But I agree that overall there is a sharp uptick in non-Chinese sales (Western Europe and the US) which should bring in far more revenue than Chinese sales, I should think, even with a Chinese market drop off.