there is no scenario here where less competition is better for the end user;)

I didn't say 'better', I said 'less worse than you make it sound'. There are still other players on the high-end overclocking market and they will definitly try to take control over the market that used to be Foxconn's.

does all this have anything to do with VR-Zone owner no longer getting a VISA to get into the country to work for Foxconn?

Shamino was evicted from Taiwan because his Visum expired and Foxconn didn't warn him. After the eviction, he argued with his boss about the ideology behind the QF series, which is supposed to be for overclockers, but in the end needs to sell as well. He left Foxconn and now works for EVGA.

Saaya, member of XS, still works for Foxconn though and there is a new X58 Quantum Force almost ready to be send to their overclocking R&D team, which consist of overclockers all over the world giving feedback, similar to what they've done with the BlackOps.

I reckon it might have something to do with the problems with Shamino, but I'm not sure. Has this message been confirmed yet or is this the only source?

only source I've seen so far. their X58 looks nice:

That's the QF board, notice the 3 memory slots (instead of 6) and awefully placed PCIe slots.

This is the Digit-Life X58:

Is that a speaker on top of the chipset? :p

Foxconn and Biostar were never in the same class... Not seen anything to convince me Biostar is anything beyond a budget enthusiast offering.

As far as Abit goes... if I hadn't seen their own X58 board I would've counted them out already. From what I've heard they already are suffering end-user support issues, especially with BIOS updates.

Edit: Third Foxconn X58 board is the Renasisannce: http://www.dvhardware.net/article27681.html

there is no info there!