Friday, December 31st 2010
Prepare for Motherboard Price-Hike
With the entire PC motherboard industry concentrated in Taiwan and China, it is valid to say that PC prices are pretty-much pegged to Taiwan's economy. Following a wave of labor-reforms in China and Taiwan coupled with deficit of skilled labor, and inflation added to the mix; key motherboard manufacturers are finding it difficult to cope with competitive motherboard pricing. A much smaller contributor to this is Intel's decision to phase out cheap G31 chipsets, making manufacturers buy slightly costlier G41 ones for the most common motherboard models.
Industry sources told Digitimes that the big three in the motherboard industry - ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI, will be hiking prices of their motherboards shortly, to cope with increasing raw-material, labor, and component costs. The price-hike is likely to increase prices by 10% on average in the next three months. Some higher-end models could increase by as much as 20%, if labor costs in China continue to rise. Another factor here is bulk manufacturers of printed circuit boards (PCBs), who have hiked their prices following increase in price of high-grade copper by a whopping 50% (from US $6000 /ton to $9000 /ton).
Sources:
DigiTimes, OCWorkbench
Industry sources told Digitimes that the big three in the motherboard industry - ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI, will be hiking prices of their motherboards shortly, to cope with increasing raw-material, labor, and component costs. The price-hike is likely to increase prices by 10% on average in the next three months. Some higher-end models could increase by as much as 20%, if labor costs in China continue to rise. Another factor here is bulk manufacturers of printed circuit boards (PCBs), who have hiked their prices following increase in price of high-grade copper by a whopping 50% (from US $6000 /ton to $9000 /ton).
34 Comments on Prepare for Motherboard Price-Hike
[INDENT]Some higher-end models could increase by as much as 20%, if labor costs in China continue to rise. [/INDENT]
As long as theres an if I wouldn't care much.
[INDENT]Another factor here is bulk manufacturers of printed circuit boards (PCBs), who have hiked their prices following increase in price of high-grade copper by a whopping 50% (from US $6000 /ton to $9000 /ton). [/INDENT]
Oh Please. There is more fuel being used to get the motherboard to you than copper. And copper prices are expected to drop soon as the price was created by high demand lately
bigcharts.marketwatch.com/quickchart/quickchart.asp?symb=copper&sid=0&o_symb=copper
Anyone here think that would really cause any of us a big problem when it comes to upgrading?
Seems good to me, I don't mind paying and extra 20 ontop of a 100 for example if the product is good.
As usual Inflation means more profit for the big ones :cool:
:/
Well, at least we know that we will need to hang on our computer a lil bit longer (im at 2 and a half years now)
@Innocent Criminal: Foxconn employees kill themselves not because the hard working conditions but because they had a policy in which, if they died at work for any reason, their families gets a monetary compensation equivalent to A LOT of hours of work.
EDIT: Didnt quoted as im lazy right now
mac customers will assume its because they used extra glossy plastic.
Maybe we can get a US grant to build one as a derivative of an existing brand like Gigabyte. TPU could have its own factory to help the economy and have its own line of motherboards.
The price increase doesn't really bother me. Hopefully when the AM3+ boards come out I will have the foresight to have saved up a little extra cash.
Except food 95% of things are made outside of US and consumed in US.
Well, if RAM is cheap I'll be happy. Hmm.... where are video cards getting made nowadays? Hopefully they don't get too spendy.