Earlier this week rumors of motherboard manufacturer DFI pulling out of the retail industry started circulating (again), it would throw out the LAN Party series it was said. According to these rumors DFI would officially leave the market in January 2010 and instead focus on the OEM industry. We decided to contact DFI and have a chat to get the story from the horse’s mouth and we can safely say that the rumors that have been spreading are not true. DFI even revealed bits on its plans for the retail market for 2010.
First we received a letter from the DFI HQ in Taiwan where it announced it was surprised to hear these rumors, even if the story is anything but new.
Currently DFI has no plans to shut down its retail motherboard operation and we even received a list of the things DFI is planning to do to update its product portfolio next year;
- Releasing BIOS for X58 to support Intel 6-core 32 nm processor, code-named Gulftown.
- Promoting and developing Hybrid system and technology.
- After launching MI P55-T36, we are planning and developing more MI products.
- For high end market, our product design of AMD 890 was just rendered to AMD for review.
DFI have several new products coming and it will continue developing new ones, and it says that the LAN Party program is still very much alive and will be completed with more innovative products. It ended with a strong denial of the rumors of leaving retail;
Such rumors should be just ignored.
Even if we are happy that DFI will be around, they also told us that the market is incredibly tough right now. It’s easy to imagine the problems smaller companies get when the big dragons keep constantly pumping out new motherboards of all kinds and sizes.
We have learned that DFI will be revising its tone and that it will be focusing more on niched products where the competition is not as intensive as it is with more generic motherboards. They will still be retail oriented though, we can guarantee you that. We hope to see more products like the Hybrid motherboard, but we will just have to wait and see what the future will bring.
Dual platforms in one and the same motherboard (Atom + P45)
At this point there is no reason to dismiss DFI as it is still very much one of the few company that truly lives to satisfy the wholehearted enthusiasts.
