Motherboard Shipments Drop by Ten Million Units in 2022

[AleksandarK]

The PC industry has been hit hard by the current market conditions and economic downturns, as the entire industry has seen sales of new PCs drop to new lows. Equally so, the PC motherboard makers have experienced a crash in sales, where collectively, they delivered ten million units less in 2022 compared to 2021. Thanks to the information by DigiTimes, we have information that major motherboard makers, ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, and ASRock, have seen their sales plummet to new lows and reflect how much of a drop the market experienced in the middle of economic uncertainty that the year 2022 brought.

In 2021, ASUS delivered more than 18 million motherboard units; in 2022, it is down to 13.6 million, representing a 25% difference. GIGABYTE shipped 11 million units in 2021, whereas in 2022, the company delivered around 9.5 million motherboards. GIGABYTE has experienced the smallest drop with "only" 14% lower sales. MSI used to deliver 9.5 million motherboards in 2021, and in 2022 its sales plummeted by 42% to 5.5 million units. The worst drop in sales is the one by ASRock, where the company saw its sales go from around 6 million units in 2021 to just 2.7 million units in 2022. This is the report's most significant recorded drop, equaling 55% lower sales in 2022.



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[TumbleGeorge]

Must drop prices. Asus especially must drop base prices and premium markup, because they got a "lot of oil" due to greed.

 

[HTC]

It seems board makers are trying to fix the drop in sales, using the new DDR5 platforms as excuses, to sell new boards @ higher prices: this to me looks more like a "shot in their own foot" approach.

If not for the current global economic situation, they might have gone away with such a tactic but, as it is ...

 

[ixi]

I wonder from time to time. How much people are willing to pay for pc parts. And then companies are like - oMg, people are not buying new stuff anymore....

 

[Broken Processor]

Economic downturn and huge price bloat what did they expect.

 

[claes]

TBF AMD and Intel control chipset prices, not these guys. Probably had overly optimistic perspectives on demand, though

 

[mclaren85]

Is this because of economic downturns or a lot of people turn to smartphones?

 

[KrazyT]

GIGABYTE has experienced the smallest drop with "only" 14% lower sales.

Looking at the market, it seems they're offering good price for their products ?

 

[Tek-Check]

@AleksandarK
If they had sold around 44.5 million in 2021 and then 31.3 in 2022, the difference is not 10 million,as the title suggests, but 13.2 million less boards. Could you p, please, double check this?

 

[GeorgeMan]

And they are gonna drop by more. People are already at their limits.

 

[Chaitanya]

Looking at the market, it seems they're offering good price for their products ?

Gigabyte has huge range of SKU(often with little to no difference in different models) with small price difference so people have option to select boards based on their budget(often within 5-10$).

 

[Tek-Check]

I wonder from time to time. How much people are willing to pay for pc parts. And then companies are like - oMg, people are not buying new stuff anymore....

As you can see in the article, more than 13 million customers were not willing to pay more last year and vendors sold less.

 

[Dragokar]

Maybe dont upsell any stuff that only costs Cents in the bom........and release some good old atx Workstation like boards.....reliable and usefull af please.

 

[Assimilator]

Very interesting numbers; I would've expected that the manufacturers who serve the lower end of the market, like ASRock, would report better figures than the ones serving the higher end.

 

[Mister Jinx]

I have a personal opinion for this and other drops in PC parts shipments, as i wrote is just a personal opinion, based on the observation of the prices and performance of video cards in the last 10 years.
In a not far past, the video cards market had the characteristic of generally presenting a mid tier product with roughly the same performance of previous generation Top tier. That meant that by waiting a couple years a general user could have keep with technological advance without selling parts of their body. The price did not follow only the performance. With this model the SLI/Xfire solutions permitted to churn higher numbers without hitting the prices of the single video card. You want more you buy more cards (I know it was not all gold).

At some point one of leading producers started to experiment in to rising the prices of Top tier vcards over a certain level, also due the growth of crypto. However they found out that people would buy at inflated price but they would not do as before and buy the top tier every 2 years, if you spend so much you would wait for longer cycles, and obviously spending so much for the top tier and seeing it at a quite lower price 2 year later as mid tier would not stimulate in investing in top tier at these higher prices.

So their solution was to continuously rise the prices of vcards linking them only to the performance and not also to the generation. And here we are today with vcards that cost 3 to 5 times as before and Mboards being impacted.

Now we go to the topic, if you have to invest 1300/1500$ for only the video card and you still have to buy the rest you will not cheap out on the rest, if not what is the sense in buying a vcard like that? We have seen how the Mboards and the memories prices have risen (only SSD prices went down), it still make sense to spend so much for a PC? I think that for those that were happily sailing with mid - mid/high DYI PC have found themselves in front of the decision of throwing 3 to 4 times more money than before or just search alternatives.

The alternatives were always there, the damn consoles. Now for the price of a vcard you can buy a console plus the VR set and games. So if you want to play is still convenient to build a PC? No. You want to do also work? Sure a cheap notebook will permit to do that and it will be usable for long time (excluding MS OS updates that kill their performance). At the end excluding the super enthusiast a lot of people just let it go.

To build a DYI pc you need the vcard, without it basically you have just a workbox and you do not buy an expensive Mboard for it, but with the prices so high excluding the super enthusiasts (that i would compare to car/vintage car modders) no one would build it. Would a market survive only with super enthusiasts? No and yes. A mass production market would die and only a super luxury market would survive.

So to conclude I think we are witnessing the end of the mass market for the DYI PCs with all the consequences it has for its ecosystem and Mboard crash is another sign for it. As the time passes even the super luxury market will shrink as people with the knowledge/will to do DYI will slowly disappear due the money wall.

As I started this is just my interpretation and on my side I really hope to be wrong and see in couple of years the prices of parts for a DYI PC to take a big step back. But I am not very optimist, the greed displayed by some vcard companies (and the others following) to have it more, now and with no vision of the future will definitely kill the goose lying the golden eggs (if is not already dead/really sick).

 

[zlobby]

Neat! It is time for reality (price) check!

Gigabyte has huge range of SKU(often with little to no difference in different models) with small price difference so people have option to select boards based on their budget(often within 5-10$).

I have bad news if $10 make or break you PC build.

 

[Tek-Check]

Very interesting numbers; I would've expected that the manufacturers who serve the lower end of the market, like ASRock, would report better figures than the ones serving the higher end.

Lower end market has less disposable income and thus more likely to keep their products for longer. It makes sense if lower-end boards have been undersold, regardless of the vendor.

 

[wauc4uluq]

Prices are rising. Asus B250 motherboard for Kaby Lake was about 60 Euro, now B760 is about 135 Euro.

 

[Bwaze]

Very interesting numbers; I would've expected that the manufacturers who serve the lower end of the market, like ASRock, would report better figures than the ones serving the higher end.

Perhaps ASrock doesn't have the same amount of products for OEM builders, I imagine the biggest drop was precisely in enthusiast / high end?

 

[Shtb]

TBF AMD and Intel control chipset prices, not these guys. Probably had overly optimistic perspectives on demand, though

So what?
It's no longer the case, when chipset consisted of north and south bridges, now there is only hub.
How much does hub now takes a share in prime cost of board?
30%? 25%? 20%?

 

[TumbleGeorge]

Prices are rising. Asus B250 motherboard for Kaby Lake was about 60 Euro, now B760 is about 135 Euro.

So what?
It's no longer the case, when chipset consisted of north and south bridges, now there is only hub.
How much does hub now takes a share in prime cost of board?
30%? 25%? 20%?

B760 cost $31 per 1/1000 units. For more of 1000 has discounts which is not public known.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Gee, I guess that price gouging by $100-500 on a lackluster generation in the middle of a major (not) recession (because we changed the definition guyz!) turned out to be a really bad financial decision.

I hope all of the vendors involved lose their shirts.

TBF AMD and Intel control chipset prices, not these guys. Probably had overly optimistic perspectives on demand, though

That may be responsible for the floor rising to $200, not $450+.

 

[mouacyk]

F around <=> Find out

 

[Dr_b_]

Stop adding aesthetics that raise the cost, plastic bits, metal armor, M.2 heatsinks, LEDs, animated screens, these are all unnecessary.
Focus on the electronics first, quality components, and features. Return to function, keep the costs down by not adding in the trash that doesn't make the board better
Debug LEDs are now a premium "feature". If you want Thunderbolt 4, it can only be found on high end motherboards that cost 500+, yet they are ubiquitous on laptops.
At the same time, you do get "gamery" logos and stupid slogans silk screened all over it, absurd vrm heatsinks that aren't totally functional or optimal, RGB everywhere
This is partly due to post pandemic, but the insane prices and lack of features are also to blame for the steepness of the drop

 

[Icon Charlie]

Economic downturn and huge price bloat what did they expect.

Agreed. Again just close your wallets and think on the real important things.

Like Food. I can tell you right now our Government is messing with the numbers about the cost of food. They only stated 10% according to their figures.

But I can tell you this. The REAL Cheap Walmart Brand of bread costed 88 cents in 2/22. The same cheap bread now cost $1.47 per loaf where I live. Over 60% in price increase.
Eggs? Yeaaaa. Lets not go there. But milk about 30% over last year.

80% of the people in the US do not have the money like they did back in 2019. So of course people are not going to upgrade their computers/tech.

Because they can't.