Asustek and Gigabyte hold hands for joint motherboard venture

Apparently the world of motherboard manufacturing is a whole lot more political than you'd guess, and this new joint venture between motherboard giant Asustek and its smaller competitor Gigabyte has more twists and turns in it than an episode of The West Wing. They're going halvsies on a new company to produce lower-end motherboards in competition with rising star Hon Hai, which recently shot to number 2 in the motherboard world. The NT$8 billion venture ($244 million USD) is simultaneously an effort by Asustek to drop a competitor (Gigabyte) and a method of cost savings for Gigabyte, since production will likely be outsourced to Asustek. Gigabyte's motherboard and graphics card biz will be wholly swallowed by the new venture, and they'll hold 51 percent of the company, while concentrating on phones and other such devices with their Gigabyte brand. There, confused yet?

[Via The Inquirer]

[Bollenator @ Aug 9th 2006 12:59PM]

Not to be over-critical of easily one of my favorite sites on the IntarWebz, but the "[company_logo1] ♥(heart) [company_logo2]" has sort of lost its cuteness after the umpteenth usage. I know from all the time I spend checking on the Engadget stories in my Live.com feed that Engadget editors possess sufficient Photoshop skillz to avoid rehashing the same formula ad nauseam.

Just a little constructive criticism.

As for the story, I'd be more inclined to buy a mobo from an Asus-backed company than from Gigabyte anyway, but that's just me.

[phez @ Aug 9th 2006 1:00PM]

Haven't alot of GB mobos recently, you know, burn up on users?

[Eazy @ Aug 9th 2006 1:35PM]

Engadget, this story is old. By like a day and a half.

[joe @ Aug 9th 2006 1:37PM]

nice..i've owned mobos of both brands and they are consistently of the highest quality. and the tech support is great!

[Hello Moto @ Aug 9th 2006 2:26PM]

I have been using a Gigabyte motherboard for the last 12 months, in some overclock test it seems to run great, and its been very stable and overall very cool expect the northbridge (Thats an intel issue though, not GB) The design of hte mobo is great and one of the new left that still has an old style parrelle printer port on the board. They also have several other cool motherboards like having a mini-fan where that port is to draw away some heat (can become one of hte hottest areas). In general I love the layout and features and was on the cheap side to.

The real problem however is that GB is small so programs like speed fan often don't have most of the mobos for GB, and thus the programs don't work right. Really sucks there.

[Jon Doe @ Aug 9th 2006 4:12PM]

++ Please stop the

[Ben @ Aug 10th 2006 11:23AM]

Yes, yes, nice information. Now lets all stop praising this merger and GET BACK TO WORK on those Intel nForce 5 motherboards.

Geeze... slackers.

[Natalie @ Aug 14th 2006 4:49AM]

I don't see any confusion for the joint-venture, except the way that u wrote is mis-leading the readers. Go get more accurate information instead of using BS info from some gossip website