jmke

As second-tier motherboard makers continue to lose money, they are expected to increasingly fall prey to takeovers by investors or be forced out of the market in the second half of the year, as seen by the recent takeover of Soyo Computer by members of the Taiwan-based PC Chips Group, according to sources at the makers.

A number of investors representing China-based “Lung Teng” (transliterated from Chinese) Electronics, a member of the PC Chips Group, recently bought a majority stake of Soyo’s NT$390 million capital expansion plan through a private placement, the sources said.

Soyo completely reshuffled its board of directors and supervisors followed the capital expansion in July, with personnel related to PC Chips taking a majority of seats on the board, according to sources at Soyo.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20040802A1001.html

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jmke

PC Chips motherboards I know are low quality budget boards NOT aimed at enthusiasts, Soyo boards are feature (or were) rich and were aimed at the enthusiast.

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Sidney

PCchips boards are used by a lot of system builders in direct competition with low end/mass product line.

As more and more Taiwan board makers have and will move the plants into China for lower production cost; more and more will be "eaten" by the Chinese firms in China. It's like hand feeding the tiger; your "hand" no more.

In recent 5 years, you could not find a product that would last more than 12 months which makes it very difficult to make enough sales to pay for toolings. I don't know if VIA, SIS will last any longer unless they have very sound financial support. Nvidia started in chipset manufacturing two years ago, ATI might follow??

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lazyman

Opteron 165 (2) @2.85 1.42 vcore AMD Stock HSF + Chill Vent II