ASUS has grab a big piece of the market for premium motherboards, where it can brag about 70 percent of all shipped X79 motherboards. It also reveals the first bits on its coming tablets based on Microsoft’s operating system Windows 8.
ASUS being the world’s largest motherboard maker is not news, but in the upper segment it is dominating hard. It was not long ago Intel launched Sandy Bridge-E and the X79 chipset, and it looks like ASUS has grabbed the majority of the market. Seen to only X79 motherboards ASUS has a global share of 70 percent.
Looking at Z68- and P67 motherboards the number is a bit lower, but still impressive at 50-60 percent. ASUS is expected to start shipping motherboards in the 7 series in late February, to launch together with Ivy Bridge in April. ASUS denies theories of full stock of motherboards and says production is running as usual. The company has shipped 23.5 million motherboards in 2011, and hopes to increase this in 2012 to 25 million.
In Q3 Windows 8 will launch and bring the new Metro interface that is specially designed for tablets and other touch units. ASUS told Digitimes it is planning to launch two tablets with Windows 8. One based on Intel Clover Trail-W and one using ARM (WoA, Windows on ARM) at 599 and 459 dollar respectively. It is planning to launch both tablets in Q4.
ASUS intends to hire more staff for developing new products and software. It will go from 300 working exclusively with Android, to 400. It will keep the 150 working on Windows, but is planning to hire more as Windows 8 arrives.
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