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
Even though prices are really very low already, I honestly wouldn't mind paying another 100 bucks to purchase USA made products. Since it would most likely be even more quality controlled (given unions and regulations) equipment for us.