ABIT is one of the best known motherboard manufacturers on the enthusiast market and we’ve had a chat with the company’s Scandinavian head of marketing to check what their views are on the future together with USI.

ABIT is perhaps one of the most influential manufacturers on the enthusiast market and has for many years been one of the most renowned motherboard manufacturers. Its target consumers has always been, more or less, enthusiasts/overclockers and lately even gamers. Compared to many of its competitors ABIT has been a relatively small actor and even if this has its advantages it also has its downsides. The last 15 months ABIT has been having some economical issues and many have been worried about the company’s future. A couple of weeks ago we received a calming and at the same time worrying decision to many. ABIT has been purchased by the not so well-known company USI.

In an attempt to clear things out we’ve had a chat with David Jarlestedt marketing manager at ABIT Scandinavia about ABIT’s future. We asked him about a dozen questions that we have posted here in this article and hopefully it will answer some of the questions you had about ABIT and USI.


David Jarlestedt – Marketing Manager at ABIT Scandinavia

Before we move on to the questions we will give you a short presentation of USI. As ABIT was unable to supply us with all the information we wanted, we have found out the rest through some digging on our own.

Universal Scientific Industries Co. (USI) is a division of ASE Global. Both ASE and its USI division offer services such as circuit/board design, silicon wafer probing, engineering tests, material procurement, assembly and a host of other manufacturing services. USI’s responsibilities are more specific with four major industries: communications, car electronics, computing, and consumer electronics such as wi-fi communications and A/V processing.

Some of USI/ASE’s customers are: Phillips, Toshiba, Sony, Siemens, LSI Logic, Renesas, Conexant, VIA, ATI, NVIDIA, Silicon Image, IBM, and AMD, just to name a few. USI alone has 8 large manufacturing facilities that no doubt will be a huge asset to Abit turning out more products. With these resources, we can be sure that ABIT’s TTM (time-to-market) performance will improve and satisfy the large customer base of gamers and enthusiasts.

Those who wants to know more about USI and ABIT, who most of you are well familiar with, should pay a visit to the companies’ respective homepages.
ABIT’s homepageUSI’s homepage

Now it’s time for us to move on to the interview and hear what ABIT had to say about its current position and future.


[NH]: How much influence will USI have over ABIT’s assortment?

[David]: It’s hard to say at this point, but USI’s direct influence on our product range will probably be rather limited. It was mainly due to ABIT’s unique strengths in research and development that so many companies were interested in cooperating with us in the first place. We chose to go for USI because of their experience and uncompromisingly high quality manufacturing procedures.

[NH]: Will ABIT continue with its enthusiast and gamer products or do you plan on making ABIT more of a mainstream brand?

[David]: We are looking into the prospects of extending our product range further into the mainstream and budget segments. USI’s experience and economy of scale would clearly facilitate such a move, but we will never forget, nor leave, what has always been our main focus throughout the years. In the short-term we will continue to focus our resources on our core business, which is making enthusiast-level motherboards. When it comes down to it, it’s only through the support of the enthusiast community that ABIT has managed to become such a household name in performance hardware. It may sound like empty words coming from a PR person, but ABIT’s motherboards are made for and by fellow overclockers and gamers. By the way, all of you nice blokes at NordicHardware are welcome to stop by and join our office sessions if you happen to be passing through Taipei (overclocking, benchmarking, gaming – you name it!).

[NH]: Will ABIT be broadening its assortment with more low end boards to reach out to more consumers?

[David]: As I mentioned before, thanks to USI’s larger resources we can now investigate the possibilities to release cost-down and value versions of more ABIT motherboards. However, this is a question for the future and you will most likely not see this happen before the second half of 2006.

[NH]: Is there anything else you would like to share about USI’s purchase of ABIT; is it the entire company ABIT or only certain parts?

[David]: The Abit group consists of a few different companies, all of which are operating quite independently from each other. What most people in the PC community think of when they hear the name ABIT is the motherboard-brand ABIT and this is the division that is now merging with USI. There will be a new motherboard-division formed between ABIT and USI, but this will be operating under the same brand and will be run by the same people. The other companies will stay with the Abit group and are not part of the merger.

[NH]: Will your product launch plans be affected when USI takes over the business?

[David]: Only for the better. We will finally have the stability we need to plan our future launches with more confidence. Among others, we should be able to improve our time-to-market with new motherboards, as new chipsets and platform generations arrive. By the way, USI has not ‘taken over the business’ as such. We’re still the same people working with ABIT – the same products, the same engineers and the same dedicated team. From a consumer perspective, there shouldn’t be any tangible differences with the “new” ABIT, even if the ownership has changed.

[NH]: Is there any specific product you are looking forward to?

[David]: The product I am personally looking forward to the most is still classified. Other than that the expectations are high for the upcoming ATI RD580 and later on of course Socket AM2. The A64 platform will only become more interesting if NVIDIA gets some competition in the market. ABIT has quite a few interesting projects going on and we are planning to introduce several new and exciting products at CeBIT in March. We have just released our ABIT AN8 32X motherboard (Dual SLI X16), reviews of which should appear on websites very soon. Also keep your eyes open for our upcoming 975X boards for Intel’s Socket 775, the ABIT AW8D and AW8D-MAX.


[NH]: What are your opinions about AMD’s new Socket AM2 and what do you have planned for this platform?

[David]: AMD finally moves to DDR2 and it’s quite possible that it will be Socket AM2 and the new memory controllers on the next generation of AMD CPUs that will finally give the market the boost it needs to migrate more fully towards DDR2. AMD and ABIT are long-term partners and we have signed an NDA on Socket AM2, so unfortunately I can’t share any further details with you regarding performance or specific models. The only thing I can say for sure is that ABIT will most definitely have some blazing boards ready when AMD decides it’s time for an official launch.

[NH]: Will you continue to support Socket 939, which is the primary enthusiast platform, even after the launch of AM2?

[David]: Of Course! As long as there are Athlon64s and Opterons for Socket 939 on the market we will be designing new motherboards supporting these. ABIT usually keeps on supporting older platforms for several generations back, and Socket 939 won’t be an exception to this rule. Those who have bought a Socket 939 motherboard from ABIT will be able to download new BIOS updates and get support for a long time after the introduction of AM2.

[NH]: What are ABIT and USI more specifically hoping to gain from this cooperation?
What does each one have to gain?

[David]: USI will be able to enjoy ABIT’s focus on the enthusiast community and brand-recognition in the retail channel, and also get access to our expertise in R&D and design. ABIT in turn will get some well-needed stability and access to USI’s excellent resources in quality manufacturing. USI has no less than eight factories at the moment, with a total floor space of 210.000m2. USI and ABIT each have comparably well-developed support networks already, which means we will be able to expand our after-sales support to end-users with another 35 support centers worldwide.

[NH]: Will ABIT still be the name behind the products or do you plan on changing your name?

[David]: There are no plans whatsoever for changing our brand-name. The ABIT brand is one of our biggest assets, and also one of the major reasons for USI to be interested in cooperating with us in the first place, so changing the name would only be counter-productive for everyone.

[NH]: Is there anything else ABIT would like our readers to know about the merger with USI, we know that many of our readers are faithful ABIT followers that are curious about ABIT’s future.

[David]: I would like to take this opportunity to thank NordicHardware and all the enthusiasts out there, our fans as well as our critics, for showing so much interest in this merger and for the future of ABIT. We will continue operating like before and we will do our best to make this transition as smooth as possible. Keep your eyes open for the ”new” ABIT, which will be stronger and better than ever.

 

With that said, we would like to thank David and ABIT for participating in this interview. We will of course continue to follow ABIT in the future here at NordicHardware so you keep your eyes open for more ABIT news.

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