ASUS recently cut the number of motherboards that will be produced in Q1 by 40 percent, says Digitimes. The reason for the cut is large stock of motherboards from Q4 2011 that needs to be sold first.
Most motherboard makers reduced their production volumes in Q4, but not ASUS – which resulted in 1 million unsold motherboards. It had plans to produce 5 to 6 million motherboards in Q1, but has decided to slow down to 3 to 3,5 million units. This will not affect ASUS finances noticeably, but should make it a more profitbale than last quarter.
Those who are affected are instead ASUS’ component partners that will get less orders. The number of chipsets from Intel to ASUS has dropped from 2.5 to 2.8 million, while AMD lost 500,000 to 700,000. It is likely that those behind ASUS motherboard production will take a hit in Q1. A major reason ASUS was left with a large surplus of motherboards in Q4 2011 was the floods in Thailand that paralyzed the harddrive industry.
The higher harddrive prices increased the total system cost, but Intel intends to counter this by lowering prices of some Sandy Bridge processors. As the harddrive industry recovers and prices lowers most motherboard manufacturers have a positive outlook on the future.
