Are motherboard manufacturers entering a recession?

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The end of the health crisis is a liberation for most of us, but for some it provokes much more painful reactions. The year 2022 continues to bring bad news on the PC hardware industry front. Even though we have put this “bad news” into perspective, it is important to take an interest in it, not for the sake of voyeurism, but to try to understand how it will affect us, especially with motherboards.

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Motherboard manufacturers announce they are suffering

With Covid behind us, it is the crisis between Ukraine and Russia that is being blamed for the economic downturn. Inflation and loss of consumer confidence are having a major impact on sales, including in the PC industry. Three major manufacturers have decided to communicate figures that may seem very worrying. The first to communicate is ASUS. The company declared that it would ship 18 million motherboards in 2022, a volume similar to 2021. However, already in the first quarter this target has been significantly lowered to 15.5 million. Early last month, the numbers dropped again and are currently between 14 and 14.5 million units. That is, if nothing improves, their shipments will drop by at least 25% when comparing the year 2022 to the year 2021. GIGABYTE said it would reach 13 million units shipped by the beginning of the year. But then again; the company quickly reduced that value by lowering its annual forecast to 9.5 million units. Internal projections estimate that it will be difficult to do better than 70% of the original target. ASRock is also in a bad way, as from 6 million cards shipped in 2021, it is only aiming for 4 million units shipped this year 2022… An estimate that seems optimistic. The industry as a whole seems to be betting big on the future release of the Ryzen 7000 but especially on the new graphics cards from AMD, Intel and Nvidia.

-25 to -30% of delivery volume… But compared to what?

cartes mères PC shop These figures are obviously worrying, but before following the trend, let’s try a little analysis. First of all these – xx% are comparisons between actual and forecast in most cases. But if we were to talk about the year 2021 as a reference, let’s remember what the manufacturers have achieved… We have already said here that many forecasts for the year 2022 were made under euphoric fumes. Let’s remember that Asus in particular has grown by more than 30% in 2021, with a turnover of more than $18 billion. In the same logic, MSI has grown by more than 40% in 2021 (compared to an already excellent year 2020). And if we talk about Gigabyte, its sales have increased by nearly 45% in the same year. We could therefore say that the year 2020 should be weak which explains these stratospheric progressions … It is nothing since MSI recorded in 2020 an increase in its revenues of 22%, 26% for Asus! In fact, the 2022 market seems to be simply returning to the basics of 2019. At that time MSI delivered about six million motherboards and ASRock about four million…It was the “normal” time but obviously not the good old days for the manufacturers.