Abit To Bow Out of Mainboard Market 97
Steve Kerrison writes "Taiwanese technology firm Abit will be pulling out of the mainboard market at the end of this year. HEXUS.channel, citing sources close to South East Asian distributors, reports that the company will continue to deliver mainboard products until the end of 2008 and will still honour all warranties in subsequent years. Rumours of this decision circulated in May but were dismissed. Apparently the decision was made in the last couple of weeks. Abit is a popular brand amongst PC hardware enthusiasts, many of whom will be disappointed to see it leave the market."
Computers are like TVs now. (Score:5, Informative)
It looks like the margins have become too tight for all but the largest mainboard makers to survive, with massive companies like Foxconn able to exploit extreme economies of scale.
Which is exactly what the TV industry went through. Even the big players left and licensed their names to Chinese companies. Do you really think the Sony TV is really a Sony? Or RCA or GE .... It's just a commodity.
The margins are just too low to even bother with them.
Re:Abit was still making mobos? (Score:1, Informative)
The old Abit died a couple years ago. The current Universal Abit [wikipedia.org] company has sucked since then.
Re:Capacitors (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, Abit *was* just as guilty, when the problem was first noticed, but they admitted there was a problem, and took a stance of Japanese-only caps later on. Newer boards from Asus and Epox have STILL had bad caps as recently as a year ago, while Abit boards no longer have any problems. This is from my limited experience with all my relatives and friends that I buy parts for and/or fix computers for.
Re:Capacitors (Score:3, Informative)
Many of the motherboard makers including Gigibyte and Asus have switched to using OSCON style solid electrolytic capacitors which do not suffer from the same problems that normal aluminum electrolytic capacitors do. While they like to brag about how noble this makes them, I suspect the real reason is that it just became more economical because of the increasingly stringent requirements for the processor's voltage regulator. In designs where the capacitors' equivalent series inductance and resistance have become fundamental limitations, the higher cost for OSCON style parts can cross over with the cost of using many more aluminum electrolytics.