ASRock Wants to Sell Over 8 Million Motherboards in 2013
ASRock wants to beef up its motherboard shipments in 2013.
Taiwanese motherboard maker ASRock, the third largest worldwide in 2012 following Asus and Gigabyte, is reportedly pushing to sell more than 8 million motherboards in 2013, up from 7.7 million units last year.
Currently, the company's motherboard business accounts for 90-percent of its revenue while its HTPC business only accounts for 5-percent. The remaining 5-percent stems from its embedded product business. ASRock has also "aggressively" entered the industrial PC (IPC) sector, according to COO Hsu Lung-luen, although the company hasn't seen any immediate profit.
Hsu recently told DigiTimes that ASRock suffered drops in both profit and gross margin in 2012 due to competitive pricing. However to make up for the lack of sales, the company will focus on expanding into the Chinese market in 2013 to gain support from local vendors. Shipments within China are expected to reach 30-percent, up from 20-percent in 2012.
Hsu also noted Intel's departure from the branded motherboard sector, saying that this move should help ASRock meet its 8 million plus shipment goal in 2013. The first quarter should see a 5- to 10-percent growth, but a 10-percent drop is expected in the second. Meanwhile, the company's EPS is expected to grow from NT$8-9 ($0.27-0.3 USD) in 2012 to above NT$9 in 2013 thanks to the launch of Intel's Haswell platform later on this year.
As for entering the tablet market, Hsu said ASRock has no plans to enter because the sector has "already turned unbearable" for companies with no advantages. He also made a comment about the whole LGA / BGA packaging ordeal surrounding Intel, saying that mobile products need to be thinner, thus requiring the BGA packaging. The desktop market probably won't be affected until the end of 2015, he said.

The only thing i dont like are the brown PCB, but that itself is a tiny complaint, cause when PC is built the mobo ain't seen right?? But wait, what about cases with a window??
Asrock, just continue like that, you are in a great footing
I wish them luck.
http://sinhardware.com/images/vrm.jpg
I wish them luck.
The only thing i dont like are the brown PCB, but that itself is a tiny complaint, cause when PC is built the mobo ain't seen right?? But wait, what about cases with a window??
Asrock, just continue like that, you are in a great footing
I bought an H61M-DGS a few days ago. Had a defective RAM slot (I assume). Good thing I had a spare 4Gb stick lying around.
Much better than the previous 2005 technology that I had in my PC.
i am actually going to vote you up, i found your comment informative.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Viitg4Yoy2Y
i also found this video informative.
As long as it meets Intel's specifications, what does it matter whether it's digital or analog?
would you buy a board that has lower quality components over another board with better components?
But too bad from where i came from, it's hard to find them in shops. They need to beef up their distribution channels.
excellent board (I bought several), allowing for superb overclocks even on i3 Clarkdale (my 550
runs @ 4.7 with ease), and a good price (75 UKP). Indeed, I found it to be superior in many ways
to early P67 boards in terms of PCIe functionality.
Asrock has a good reputation for including a wide range of features at decent pricing, often with
useful support for legacy devices (eg. IDE port, floppy).
Have to say though, my recent experiences with ASUS P67/X79 boards has given me new found
respect for the ease with which ASUS has made it possible to oc 1155/2011 CPUs.
Oh, in case there are those who didn't know, Asrock used to be part of ASUS, but that ceased to
be case quite some time ago.
Ian.
My first expierence with them was a bit over a year ago with an extreme3 gen3. First developed a bad ram slot after 2 months. Returned to ASRock and they had my replacement board at my door within a week! I have done my fair share of RMAs over the years and typically you only get that fast of service when dealing with the seller, not the manufacturer, and while I was disappointed that the first one died, I was duly impressed.
Fast forward a year and I picked up an Extreme 4 on sale for the sake of having TRIM over my RAID0 SSDs to get some performance back, and also to get a few extra SATA ports. No problems, and the newer intel RAID fixed my speed degregation issue. They are not 'the best' but they are quite good, and you get a lot of bang for your $$.
That being said, when it comes to client and family builds that I have to support I tend to use MSI on low end builds because they make rock solid bare-bones boards, and I use ASUS on high end builds because they are simply the best. ASRock is simply not reliable enough where I can justify using them in a system that needs that guaranteed up time.
Very interesting that they are avoiding the tablet market. I am sure those boards have super thin margins on the hardware side, but the end product companies are making a killing. I mean, absolutely nothing goes into the damn things except for a flashey screen, and yet they still charge $500+ for them. Somebody is making money!
the way i see it asrock needs to do a major quality control overhaul
During Sandy Bridge that meant you were sticking with their cold-boot issue as well. lol
Indeed, their support is very good; direct email, and they've been happy
to answer my other misc questions over the years, often giving me info I
wasn't exepecting. One time I asked them about support for a XEON chip on
one of their consumer mbds; not only did they send me an unpublished beta
BIOS that would allow the CPU to be used, the guy also went out of his
way to explain how to install it, etc.
For a recent 3930K build I did for someone who uses After Effects, I
*almost* went with the Extreme11 because of its onboard SAS, but in the
end the price was just a tad too prohibitive, though as it happens the
user requirements were such that I realised later the SAS wasn't
necessary anyway (and in the meantime I'd managed to obtain an HP P400
SAS PCIe with battery backup for about 65 UKP). Having said that, I do
think the Extreme11 should have included at least a 51MB onboard cache
for the LSI SAS - it makes such a difference to performance of small-size
random I/O.
I had been planning on buying an Asrock board for my 2700K build, but by
sheer mad luck I managed to obtain an ASUS Maximus IV Extreme for the
lunatic price of 87 UKP, but if that hadn't happened I would definitely
have bought a Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 (almost ordered one before finding the
M4E).
I like the fact that Asrock's support people are happy to answer tech
questions, and at least the people I've talked to do seem to know what
they're talking about.
It's perhaps not surprising that ASUS often holds a slightly higher slot
at the top-end of enthusiast boards, that's long been their ROG legacy,
but it was interesting to note last year just how many sites used the
Extreme4 for parts reviews, and likewise before that how many used the
X58 Extreme6 for reviews (including toms btw), the latter inparticular
offered equal or better performance & features than the UD9 for about
half the price.
It's true that years ago Asrock tended to occupy more of the entry level
market segment, but their midrange and top-end products have come on
leaps & bounds in the last few years, easily a match for the competition
and often better, and the Extreme11 is a sure sign they're moving more
into the professional space aswell, which is good. I hope they start
doing multi-socket XEON boards, give some competition to Dell, etc.
f-14, all I can say is that low-end boards can be a total pain from *any*
vendor. Can't comment on what you say about support though, that's
certainly not been my experience (note that I was emailing with the
Asrock people in The Netherlands).
I also like the way Asrock has a somewhat more broader attitude to CPU
support on older mbds, eg. they added support for the Phenom II to their
AM2NF3-VSTA AGP board within minutes of the CPU's release (a nice boost
for someone with a 6000+ or less on an old board of that era), whereas
other vendors never bothered updating their older AM2 boards even though
in theory the Ph2 could have been used on their older products just fine
I have a few Gigabyte boards aswell, especially like the GA-X58A-UD3R for
its excellent XEON support, and I obtained a Z68XP-UD4 which works very
well. Ditto a few EVGA boards, etc.
Odd though, the only company I tend to avoid when buying mbds is MSI, but
I couldn't really say why...
Ian.