abit set to exit the main board business by the end of 08

It's a possibility I suppose but I think that I will wait for official confirmation.
Would seem a waste of the brand name/recognition.
 
Sounds about right to be honest, when you have companys like Asus, Foxconn, MSI who buy huge amounts of chipsets, motherboard parts etc, they get them cheaper in bulk so their profit margins are going to be a lot more than DFI, Abit etc, will be a shame if more Motherboard companys decide to stop making boards as it will give us less choice in the motherboard market.

abit exits mainboard market - Scott Bicheno confirmed - 28 Aug 08, 10:00am

No more margin

*****.channel can exclusively confirm that Taiwanese technology company abit, which is associated primarily with high-end and gaming mainboards, will stop producing all mainboards at the end of 2008.

*****.channel has confirmed this as fact from sources close to South East Asian distributors, all of which will be notified by their abit sales contacts from today onwards.

Apparently abit will continue to deliver mainboards until the end of the year and will honour RMAs and warranties for three years subsequently.

Rumours of abit's demise from mainboards were circulating widely last May, prompting an emphatic denial from abit. Our sources tell us that abit still intended to continue with mainboards at the time and that this decision was only made in the last couple of weeks.

This will mark a wholesale shift towards specialising in consumer electronics devices, such as the Funfab photo-frame-stroke-printer, which we spotted at this year's Computex. We understand that a MID (mobile internet device) is also planned for early next year as well as other photo related gadgetry.

Taiwanese manufacturer Universal Scientific International (USI) acquired abit in May of 2006 and it's now officially called Universal abit. There have been reports of defections and departures from the abit mainboard division ever since then, so there is a certain feeling of inevitability about this news.

In what may be a related development, Universal abit also announced today that it is moving its Taiwan HQ to a location near to the Nangang exhibition hall in Taipei, which hosted many of the leading vendors at the Computex show this year.

It looks like the margins have become too tight for all but the largest mainboard makers to survive, with massive companies like Foxconn able to exploit extreme economies of scale.

If competitive pressures have become too great for abit to stay in the mainboard market, you have to wonder what the future holds for other second tier mainboard makers, of which there are still quite a few. This may not be the last casualty in this market before the end of the year.
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nightmare99 said:
Hmm yes its a shame, they seemed to have all thier eggs in the retail market with very little or no oem business.
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I thought they would have totally merged with USI instead of just being a subsidary company. USI do oem for companys like IBM & their was post on xtreme of abit's engineers being totally integrated into USI.
 
A bit controversial but in my opinion it's not a great loss. Quite a few of their boards over the past couple of years have been terrible with the support just as bad. I have personally returned two boards under the DSR's because they were so bad. They were better in the old socket 754/939 days.
 
It's abit of a shame really as my first few boards were Abit and they were good boards!
 
pastymuncher said:
A bit controversial but in my opinion it's not a great loss. Quite a few of their boards over the past couple of years have been terrible with the support just as bad. I have personally returned two boards under the DSR's because they were so bad. They were better in the old socket 754/939 days.
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I'm going to disagree (surprise, eh? :p).
UK support was always very good & every abit I've had was good (& I've had more than most) which was more than I can say about Asus & DFI.
 
BUFF said:
I'm going to disagree (surprise, eh? :p).
UK support was always very good & every abit I've had was good (& I've had more than most) which was more than I can say about Asus & DFI.
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Shock Horror. :eek: No surprises there. Who will you be switching your allegiance to now? :p

What about releasing boards with bios's that did'nt work and then taking eons to sort the problems out? Yes Asus and others have problems at first but at least they are pretty quick to fix them. The Abit 650i board was a disaster at launch and one of the worst boards i have ever (breifly) owned. On the other hand my old 754 NF8 and then my 939 AN8-32x Sli were cracking boards. Can't understand what went wrong.
 
pastymuncher said:
Shock Horror. :eek: No surprises there. Who will you be switching your allegiance to now? :p
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Well, if they are gone I may well look at J&W (I see a lot of what I liked in abit in them) or Biostar if either gets UK distribution & support etc. sorted.
Fallback is probably Gigabyte atm.

What about releasing boards with bios's that did'nt work and then taking eons to sort the problems out?
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Hardly unique & often the BIOS that people said didn't work actually did - except in certain configs. Classic case is the AB9 QuadGT as mine worked perfectly from day 1 (& it was 1 of the first in the UK) because I used a SATA optical (having given up in disgust with an IDE on a Gigabyte 965).

Yes Asus and others have problems at first but at least they are pretty quick to fix them. The Abit 650i board was a disaster at launch and one of the worst boards i have ever (breifly) owned.
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I disagree, my Asus 650i SLI is still 1 of the worst boards that I've ever used even today - I wouldn't hold anybody's nF6xx SLI series mobo against them though as I lay the blame at the chipset rather than the mobo manufacturers.

You only have to look slightly further down this forum to see the P5N-T being nominated for worst mobo ever ...
 
I wonder whose next to drop out the mainboard market? Biostar? DFI? unless all the Abit fanatics jump ship to DFI / Biostar.

Current Motherboard Market Share - Aug 2008

  1. Asus
  2. Gigabyte
  3. MSI
  4. Abit
  5. DFI
  6. Dell
  7. Biostar
  8. Intel
  9. EVGA
  10. ECS
  11. Other

Source

motherboardstatisticsaubs1.jpg
 
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