Asus Exec Infighting May Lead to New Brand
Asus, the company most directly responsible for the netbook phenomenon, may see itself split into two competing brands.
According to Taiwan-based magazine Business Today, the computer hardware company is struggling with infighting amongst executives. Specifically, it points to a rift between Asustek chairman Johnny Shih and Tung Tsu Hsien, who heads up the OEM division called Pegatron. The magazine claims that Hsien was forced off of the Asus executive board, and into his current position as OEM boss.
In the OEM business, product branding is nonexistent because all products are bought by other brands for their consumer offerings. Apparently, Tung Tsu Hsien has a desire to continue developing brands, especially in the Chinese market. Being in charge of an OEM division does not afford him such an opportunity. When Hsien left Asustek and was put in charge of Pegatron, a large number of research and industrial design workers followed him.
While nothing is certain, and this rift may be exaggerated, it could lead to Pegatron completely breaking off from Asus to become a competitor. If this was to happen, we could expect to see many of the same products that Asus is known for, from netbooks to motherboards to full size laptops. If such a separation was to occur, hopefully Pegatron will see a name change, too.
On top of the (supposed) animosity between the Shih and Hsien, Asustek recently suffered its first quarterly loss ever. In Q4 2008, Asustek reported a NT $3 billion loss, or USD $89 million. Many are attributing this loss to the Asustek/Pegatron split.
You can find the entire Taiwanese article (translated) here.
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huh.
Interesting.
22 Billion dollar company acting Childish.
They are like in the top 100 on the fortune 500
and they are acting like kids because they cant decide
on how to make money. Either way would be profitable
just do both you idiots.
I have stock in the company and its really really beginning
to piss me off when I here about stuff like this from
insiders.
ASUS BRand to all the geeks is well known.
To the normal consumer not so much. So you have
to quote things like All HP Desktops Use ASUS Motherboards
as of 2008.
Eee pc was a step in the right direction.
You can still do OEM and make tons of actual margin dollars.
While making a brand for yourself outside of the Enthusiast Market.
Lol, asus isnt instilling any confidence for stocks there, neog2. On the flipside, after Microsoft's huge layoffs, their stock is on the floor. That's one to pick up for extremely cheap before windows 7 is released.
So you haveto quote things like All HP Desktops Use ASUS Motherboardsas of 2008.
Is that true? That would explain the very poor motherboard layout on the last couple of models I've been unfortunate enough to purchase. I've never truely liked asus, as I've always found their motherboard layouts to be horrible. (quality is good though, except for support). So if HP uses asus now, that'd explain why a double width graphics card won't fit into a dc7800 and why they deliver systems with ich9r and only solder 4 sata ports onto the thing. Or why you can't run xms2 memory at full speed on most of their systems. Or why they use ics clock generators that aren't cooperative (might be intentional).
Would be interesting if asus would split up though. Then you could hope that one of the resulting companies would focus on support staff and a homepage with more than a 1mbit internet connection.
Edit: I want to mention one positive experience with asus customer support btw. Once, back in 1999, I had an issue with some jumper settings not working. Turned out to be the audio chip that couldn't support the fsb. The asustek support person actually suggested I used a knife and cut the connections to the chip in order to make the rest of the board working properly. I never dared try, but that at least was a constructive suggestion seeing a bios update couldn't disable the chip.
I'm trying to remember... was Pegatron one of the 2 transformers that turned into a cassette tape and fit inside "Blaster" or was he one of the dinosaurs that merged together to form "Dinoking"?