The Asus Pegatron saga continues

ECS to make Asus motherboards?

CONTINUING ON where we left off a couple of days ago, more details about Asus’ plans for the future has appeared. It’s not looking pretty and if the rumours and speculations are true, then we can see a lot of users abandoning Asus as the brand to go to for motherboards in favour for its competitors. However, it’s not all doom and gloom, as at least Asus’ share price has started to level out after a sharp drop over the past few days, but it’ll take some time before it gets back to its previous level.

According to Digitimes, Asus is negotiating with ECS as a potential outsourcing partner for motherboard manufacturing. Just as FIC, which is also rumoured to be in talks with Asus to handle at least some of the motherboard manufacturing, ECS doesn’t have the best of reputations among end users. Although it’s a big difference between actual product design and manufacturing this might not be the best move from Asus’ side. Not long before its demise, Abit outsourced its manufacturing to ECS and ended up with much higher return rates and customer complaints, something that hopefully will not happen to Asus if it choses ECS as its new manufacturing partner.

One thing you learn quickly when working with Taiwanese companies is that they’re all very good at something called “cost down”. However, at times this is done without the customer’s knowledge, as the manufacturer can save a few cents here and there. This is one of the major concerns with Asus’ move to find a new manufacturing partner, as both of the companies mentioned so far are sadly known for their “cost down” approach.

Pegatron on the other hand is trying to chase down some new clients, although we’re slightly perplexed by some of the companies on the list of rumoured targets. The big boys like Acer and Dell make perfect sense, although that means Peagtron is going after Foxconn and Wistron’s customers and these are two players that aren’t going to let go of their customers easily. However, we don’t quite understand why Pegatron would approach the likes of Gigabyte and MSI, as it’s highly unlikely that either would want to support a company that’s part of the Asus family of companies.  Some of the smaller motherboard makers might be interested, as long as Pegatron offers an attractive package.

MSI handles all of its manufacturing in-house while Gigabyte is working with partners on certain product ranges. Both are fiercely competitive with Asus and this alone makes the entire suggestion a bit of a joke. But as this is just a rumour, we’re going to leave it at that and worry about more pressing matters.S|A

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