According to DigiTimes‘ sources, Taiwan PC industry sources say Asus and Gigabyte have doom-laden projections for the motherboard industry through the rest of 2022. According to the report, Asus and Gigabyte have approximately 70% of the motherboard market and they both expect sales volumes to drop by approximately 25% compared to 2021. The publication says this is due in part to the end of GPU bundling with motherboards along with demand shrinkage in the Chinese DIY market.
An early warning sign of the coming slowdown manifested in the Q2 2022 motherboard shipment figures — larger than expected shipment reductions in Q2 portend weaker shipments going into Q3, and possibly into Q4.
As for the root causes, the industry insiders say the end of the consumer GPU drought has hurt motherboard sales. GPU shortages allowed the likes of Asus and Gigabyte to promote motherboard sales by bundling them with GPUs, effectively forcing customers to buy their motherboards, thus leading to higher than normal sales volume. You might have also seen other components bundled with GPUs, too. During the depths of the GPU drought, people even bought and cannibalized whole pre-built PCs to get the GPU.
|
Year |
Asus motherboards |
Gigabyte motherboards |
|---|---|---|
|
2022 (projected) |
14 million |
9.5 million |
|
2021 |
18 million |
13 million |
|
2020 |
NA |
13 million |
|
2019 |
16.4 million |
NA |
According to DigiTimes, Asus expects its motherboard sales to fall ~24% and Gigabyte expects a ~27% decline this year. Moreover, the whole market will have dropped from ~40 million units to ~30 million units sold from 2021 to 2022.
With the introduction of AMD Ryzen 7000 and AM5 motherboards later this year, not forgetting Intel’s 13th-Gen Core processors and 700-series motherboard chipsets, one might expect the motherboard industry to enjoy a boost. However, according to DigiTimes’ sources, the next-gen CPUs and motherboards won’t stir PC DIYers or laptop buyers into action. Instead, they contend that other events, like the return of cryptomining, the end Russia-Ukraine war, or an easing of inflation, could help spur a turnaround.
There are signs that cryptomining on PC GPUs is over for good this time around–or at least for the foreseeable future. Gamers have taken up some GPU sales slack from cryptominers, but it isn’t enough to compensate for the sudden supply imbalance. As a result, we now see plentiful supplies of modern GPUs. We might move into GPU oversupply territory with mining organizations selling their gear combined with current-gen stocks being left unsold as we near the launch of next-generation products. All of this means that the motherboard makers probably won’t be able to return to the days of selling motherboards forcibly by bundling them with GPUs, which is bad for them but good for us.