Foxconn to close doors on end user market?
 

Whispers within the industry are being heard about about Foxconn and their future as a high end motherboard manufacturer. According to the rumours Foxconn are looking to scale back their operations and the end user manufacturing division may get the chop. This would be a blow to the high end user as Foxconn have brought some great motherboards to the market.

Foxconn was founded in 1974, and their end user Foxconn branded motherboard manufacture is only a small part of their business operations. They produce some well known products, such as the iPod and iPhone for Apple, the PS2 and PS3 for Sony as well as producing Intel CPU's. We do not know the reasons why Foxconn would consider ceasing production of their motherboards, and if the rumours prove to be true it will be a sad day for enthusiasts.
http://www.overclock3d.net/news.php?..._user_market/1

It's only since few years that they started to focus on delivering high-end motherboards for the end-user right? Who will miss them with so many other great brands around?

please name some other large companies which offer high end OC friendly boards? can you name more than 5 ?

since when is less competition better for the end user? :-/

Didn't say it was better, but since they have launched their end-user boards I never found a reason to go for Foxconn instead of Gigabyte, ASUS, DFI, Abit, ...

well if Foxconn does go and abit is just about to go too, then your short options list just got a lot shorter....

Since when does Foxconn offer OC friendly motherboards? The BlackOps was, when released, only decent for quadcore FSB overclocking due to the massive cpu pwm area. After 26 bios updates, the board finally hit over 620FSB on a dualcore, but it's not that common.

All other motherboards were not meant for overclockers.

P45 meant for OCers
http://www.foxconnchannel.com/Produc.../index_ELA.htm

N780A meant for OCers
http://www.quantum-force.net/Products/P000000005/

AMD 790GX meant for enthusiasts
http://www.foxconnchannel.com/Produc...dex_A79A-S.htm

X48 meant for extreme OCers
http://www.foxconnchannel.com/produc...D=en-us0000385

enough competitive products to make for an alternative for other brands and surely meant to keep the others at the top of their game because there is always somebody out there waiting to pick up the ball when another mfgr drops it;)

P45 motherboard is a digit-life series, not meant for overclockers. Normally there would've been a Quantum Force P45 motherboard, but that version will never see the retail market.

N780A is meant for overclockers, but has never been better than the others.

790GX is a digit-life series motherboard. Last I've heard, there was going to be a QF motherboard version as well, but haven't seen it anywhere.

Blackops is for extreme overclockers, but way too expensive.

Foxconn adds competition on the market, but that's all. Less competition is worse for the customer, but seen through the eyes of an overclocker the loss of Foxconn isn't that dramatic.

short term vision that, in the end it might mean less pressure for the others to push their products to the limits, which means less stellar OCs

That conclusion is based on the assumption that the only reason why manufacturers were pushing their products to the limits is because of the competition. Manufacturers will still have to compete against Biostar/Dfi/Gigabyte/MSI/..., so easing up on the high-end products won't be the case, even if Foxconn leaves the market.