When analyzing the health of the market, we usually focus on the sale of processors and graphics cards, however, this is a mistake since it is motherboard sales that set the purchasing trend and the economy of the market. moment. Not only by volume, but also by user choices. How have your sales been in 2022?
It is no secret that the common user sees less and less value in towers and it is not surprising. After all, they don’t see the value of being able to add more components or replace existing ones, many see it as a waste of space and the riot of cables that appear in the middle is annoying. In addition, they lose one of the main functions of a laptop, which is precisely to take it anywhere. That is why sales of motherboards for this type of computer are sold less and less, but the last year has been complicated to say the least.
Drop in motherboard sales in the last year
Well yes, sales of motherboards have decreased, a total of about 10 million , and although it may seem like a derisory figure, we must bear in mind that those used in computers already built at the factory are not included here, but those that Users buy to assemble their computers or small specialized stores.
In any case, the sales figures for 2022, compared to 2021, are as follows:
- ASRock is the most affected of all, its sales from 2021 to 2022 have gone from 6 million to 2.7 million . That is to say, they have sold 55% less from one year to the next .
- ASUS sold 18 million motherboards in 2021 , on the other hand, in 2022 it remained at 13.6 million , which represents a 25% cut.
- GIGABYTE has gone from 11 million in 2012 to 9.5 million in 2022 . It is the one that has suffered the least severe fall of all, with only 14%.
- MSI is the second company to have received the biggest impact of all, going from 9.5 million in motherboard sales in 2021 to 5.5 million . Which means that they have reduced their sales by 42%.
There are several reasons why this has happened, one of them was the mining bubble and that is that many people who wanted to do a complete update decided to wait until they had the graphics cards within reach to be able to assemble their new PC. If we add to this that many users have opted for parts from a year or two ago as the basis for their computers, which had already been distributed, it is normal that fewer units have been sold from the factory than in previous years.
An expired business model that should disappear
A trap of processor manufacturers is to reduce the price of the processor, increasing the price of the motherboard that is necessary for it to work. That is to say, one part cannot be used with the other and unfortunately the prices of motherboards have increased in order to keep, apparently, those of CPUs within certain margins and make people see that they are cheaper. . Which is obviously a lie, since both components go hand in hand.
As if that were not enough, we find different chipsets instead of providing additional ports for peripherals and components, as well as the fact of having a higher quality analog circuitry that ends up shooting prices above what is necessary for the end user. It is a pity that there are no chipsets on expansion cards, which serve to add more ports if we need them and reduce the exaggerated and little offer on motherboards.