Innovation Pays!

Digitimes printed a few articles recently about December 2009 earnings from motherboard makers; the first is titled: Asustek, Pegatron, MSI down, Gigabyte up in December 2009 revenues. Over the past week I have spent countless hours speaking to media, analysts and customers evangelizing about USB 3.0, SATA 6Gb/s, USB 3x power, 2 oz copper PCBs, Japanese solid capacitors, and the list goes on... All high-end specs that we use to try and differentiate ourselves from the competition in a cut-throat market where every hardware vendor buys the same components from the same suppliers.

Fortunately for us, we have been able to implement these features before others and this seems to be paying off for GIGABYTE now, but it raises many questions about the PC component market. For example, will it be profitable to sell low-end components in a market humming with cheap netbooks, nettops and entry level global OEM brand PCs? It seems that innovation in the consumer electronics industry focuses on ease of use and affordability while innovation in the PC component industry focuses rather on reliability, performance (as always) and future proofing. The Windows 7 upgrade cycle that we desperately want to believe we're entering into now would help to explain how early adoption of new technologies in this market can boost income.

Honestly, if you were looking at your next upgrade would you choose a system with USB 2.0 over one with USB 3.0?

Other relevant articles include ECS sees drop in December 2009 revenues and Foxconn posts on-year drop in 2009 revenues.