Gigabyte Apologizes for 'Made in China' Comment After Losing $550 Million
Several marketplaces had removed its products.
Gigabyte has apologized for a comment it made about Chinese manufacturing that prompted social media outrage, led several marketplaces to remove its products from their platforms, and caused a $550 million drop in its market value.
According to Bloomberg, the company published a blog post on Monday slamming its competitors for outsourcing production to Chinese manufacturers that make products in a "low-cost, low quality way." (The blog post has since been deleted.)
That comment was seen as an indictment of Chinese manufacturing writ large instead of a targeted criticism of Gigabyte's rivals— which is what prompted the removal of its products from the JD.com and Suning.com e-commerce platforms.
The market's response was also swift. Gigabyte's share price had fallen by nearly 10% when the market closed in Taipei, according to Yahoo Finance, which means its market value has dropped by about $550 million since the blog post's publication.
All of which led Gigabyte to publish an apology for that blog post.
"A few days ago, part of the text content published on our official website is seriously inconsistent with the facts," Gigabyte said, per Google Translate. "It is caused by poor internal management of the company. We sincerely apologize for the discomfort caused to you."
The company also said it will "strengthen internal management and training to ensure that all employees are aware of the problem and pay attention to it."
It's hard to imagine such a strict response to a single blog post, but it's also hard to accept that a throwaway comment about the quality of its competitors' products led Gigabyte's market value to plummet by over half a billion dollars, so we'll call it even.
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Nathaniel Mott is a freelance news and features writer for Tom's Hardware US, covering breaking news, security, and the silliest aspects of the tech industry.
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Co BIY Seems like a chance to buy the stock at a discount.Reply
The Chicom overreaction is typical bullying. How about a factual refutation of the claim ? -
carocuore "It is caused by poor internal management of the company. We sincerely apologize for the discomfort caused to you."
Yup, whoever wrote that is now enjoying permanent vacations on a nice labor camp. -
Krotow Who would say... Gigabyte should remember about PSU quality where they are slapping their name.Reply
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/gigabyte-gp-p750gm-750-w/12.html -
Giroro You know, the Chinese government is pretty good at manufacturing "social media outrage". They're also pretty good at manipulating advertising algorithms to ensure that pro-China fluff is profitable, and anti-China news gets buried.Reply
It turns out you can pretty easily direct traffic and generate a lot of clicks when you have complete government control over the media and internet access of 1.4 billion people. -
thepersonwithaface45
Feelin' like it's the otherway around in the US :censored:Giroro said:You know, the Chinese government is pretty good at manufacturing "social media outrage". They're also pretty good at manipulating advertising algorithms to ensure that pro-China fluff is profitable, and anti-China news gets buried.
It turns out you can pretty easily direct traffic and generate a lot of clicks when you have complete government control over the media and internet access of 1.4 billion people. -
hallby81
There will never be "facts" when the narrative is controlled by the CCP. There is only the message.Co BIY said:Seems like a chance to buy the stock at a discount.
The Chicom overreaction is typical bullying. How about a factual refutation of the claim ? -
truerock I can't think of any products made in China where I would not think the Taiwanese version was of higher quality.Reply
In my opinion, Chinese products are inferior to those made in many other countries.
But, the quality of Chinese products have vastly improved over the last several decades. Maybe someday we will consider Chinese products to be of high quality? -
Krotow truerock said:But, the quality of Chinese products have vastly improved over the last several decades. Maybe someday we will consider Chinese products to be of high quality?
Perhaps. It is the same way that Japan did - watched, learned, copied and made better. If Chinese in general will throw away stupid habit to con their customers and cut corners where it is bad to do, they eventually will turn out as good product makers in mass. I will not get offended if they will ask adequate price for their products then.