Market Components
CeBIT 2011 in Hannover Fair which has just ended, what was once known as the main event of the ICT sector worldwide has undergone a gradual decline in recent years, like the rest of all exhibitions of this scale. The dynamism of the Web has taken away from frames such as CeBIT, the task of being the center of the field in which to propose new, the new product launches are now almost free from such appointments, which become more and more opportunity for industry professionals to meet and work on strategies.
The 2011 edition, although it has seen a decrease in the exhibition, has partially reversed the climate of contraction and stall seen in recent years. Operators, comforted in this by an economic situation that still has difficulty scenarios but it is definitely more stable than in 2009, brought interesting news with their ads looking for that dynamic to which the market continues to sink.
The interest is in any case clearly changed: from the traditional components such as motherboards and video cards the interest, not only consumers but also the industry operators, is increasingly pushing the mobile DEVICES, real solutions proposals on the market with very high refresh rates. It 'is conceivable that a user can update passionate tablet and smartphone following the refresh rate proposed by the producers, therefore an annual basis, the different thing for traditional mobile PC, for which the residual market tends to be much higher complicit in this technological maturity which have come .
During our stay at CeBIT has been possible to interview Jackie Hsu, Director of ASUS components worldwide. The opportunity to sit down and discuss the components market there appeared to be very interesting in a time when we are witnessing profound changes in the market with a progressive convergence towards mobile components that are increasingly integrated and not accessible in terms of upgrades, the interest in the traditional components seems to be consistently less.
A comparison with those who must manage daily strategies and products related to the components for the Taiwanese company that is recognized at the retail level, as the leading interpreter of the market seemed to us then for a special occasion from the point of view ' domestic industry, going beyond what our observers prepared but to some extent unaware of some of strategic dynamics that are developed by companies.
The 2011 edition, although it has seen a decrease in the exhibition, has partially reversed the climate of contraction and stall seen in recent years. Operators, comforted in this by an economic situation that still has difficulty scenarios but it is definitely more stable than in 2009, brought interesting news with their ads looking for that dynamic to which the market continues to sink.
The interest is in any case clearly changed: from the traditional components such as motherboards and video cards the interest, not only consumers but also the industry operators, is increasingly pushing the mobile DEVICES, real solutions proposals on the market with very high refresh rates. It 'is conceivable that a user can update passionate tablet and smartphone following the refresh rate proposed by the producers, therefore an annual basis, the different thing for traditional mobile PC, for which the residual market tends to be much higher complicit in this technological maturity which have come .
A comparison with those who must manage daily strategies and products related to the components for the Taiwanese company that is recognized at the retail level, as the leading interpreter of the market seemed to us then for a special occasion from the point of view ' domestic industry, going beyond what our observers prepared but to some extent unaware of some of strategic dynamics that are developed by companies.
Boards Sandy Bridge: the problem of early 2011
At the end of the month of January, Intel announced that it had found a problem with the 3Gbps SATA controller integrated in its chipset family processors Sandy Bridge. This has led to a temporary stop in the marketing of motherboards and notebook systems, resulting in damage to the motherboard manufacturers and systems. Initially it was thought that the process would take a long time, as we see in recent weeks as to whether the emergency is retracted and the new motherboards with the B3 revision of the chipset are ready for commercialization. Can you give us your point of view on how the whole process was handled?
The problem with Intel is manifested at the end of January, just behind the week of festivities for the Chinese New Year. This has accentuated or minimized, at least in part, the negative effects?
All Taiwanese manufacturers, including Asus, have developed their own products Sandy Bridge processors according to the timing initially set by Intel. Once the bugs in the controller SATA 3Gbps chipset officially revealed the choice of Intel and Asus was immediately to protect their customers by implementing a procedure that would allow them to having a stable system. What specifically
strategy implementation? Provide customers the ability to return your motherboard as getting paid, or to replace the card with no other bugs or if you have special needs to discuss an ad hoc intervention. From the point of view of Asus the choice of having integrated in all motherboards for processors Sandy Bridge an additional 6 Gbps SATA controller has rivelata strategia corretta per alleviare le conseguenze del bug Intel: i possessori di schede madri possono infatti utilizzare i due canali SATA 6 Gbps del controller Intel, che operano correttamente, in abbinamento anche ai canali SATA 6 Gbps forniti dal controller supplementare integrato da Asus nella propria scheda madre.
L'implementazione del controller SATA 6Gbps supplementare in ogni scheda madre ha rappresentato un importante valore aggiunto secondo i nostri clienti; in molti scenari d'uso questo infatti permette di utilizzare le schede madri revision B2 senza alcun problema di stabilità in quanto tutte le periferiche di storage sono utilizzate senza dover utilizzare il controller SATA 3Gbps integrato nel chipset, l'unico componente che hardware is afflicted by the bug.
The timing was very bad, because February is typically a very good period for sales of PC in Europe. In addition, the closing weeks of the factories production means that producers are trying to accumulate as many stocks which you can during the month of January, pushing up production so as to meet the market demand by consumers expected to be supported in various regions of the world. In this sense, a problem of this magnitude will be revealed at the end of January was worse than if it had happened at other times, on the other hand had passed only a few weeks of the Sandy Bridge CPU so the number of cards, although high was still low.With regard to the management of costs related to the handling procedures to customers who have purchased cards Sandy Bridge with bugs, the feeling is that Intel wanted to protect his partner to meet all its costs. Can you confirm this, better outlining how the relationship has been with Intel for this specific problem?
From our point of view it is important to our customers directly, as they buy a product that contains technology developed by Intel, but that has been built and marketed by Asus. Whatever, therefore, the type of relationship in place with Intel Asus priority is to respond directly and immediately to meet the needs of its customers, even in the absence of support from Intel. For this reason, the intervention procedure implemented by Asus and published on its website has been very rapid, released just a few hours after the announcement of Intel.
how to innovate in the field of components?
In the component market is undergoing significant change. In recent years, market players have changed, many Taiwanese companies specialized in the production of components is passed to a scenario with very few major manufacturers capable of producing and selling almost everything. This implies that it is difficult to propose real innovations between the components, especially in an area such as the video card which has actually led to follow the reference design developed by NVIDIA and AMD. What is your vision of market-related component for the next few years? This will be an increasingly tied to a standardization of the market?
There are differences Asus the relationship between AMD and NVIDIA in terms of how to intervene in order to differentiate the new proposals with respect to video reference design?
I believe that the Asian manufacturers should always try to meet the needs of its customers, balancing this with the clear market trend that leads to consolidation. The consequence is that the producers have to be flexible and respond to customer demands, otherwise the quick exit from the scene. To this we must add as the integration of several features in the latest processors Intel and AMD, such as the graphics component, makes it even more difficult for manufacturers of components because it reduces the number of products that can offer their customers.Innovation Asus then passes through the study of solutions that are unique and can provide a tangible benefit to their customers. How do you see this evolving technological development over the next few years?
in terms of innovation, therefore, for manufacturers of components primarily thinking of cards motherboards and video cards is important to try to develop something that is original, useful for the user and not integrated into processors. Asus has therefore developed two proprietary ASIC, internally referred to as co-processors, which can provide additional functionality for customers.
What are the needs of our customers? In our opinion, two contrasting each other: on one hand have the highest performance possible, and secondly to limit the consumption of the overall system to the maximum.
On Asus motherboards, so there are two chip owners: TPU, responsible for intervening on the operating parameters to deliver maximum speed performance from the system and EPU, and to better manage the overall power consumption in an automated system. This is Asus's strategy to diversify its products so unique compared to what is offered by the competition, going beyond what are the technologies developed by AMD and Intel CPU and chipset side from being able to bring something that is not present in other models developed for the same type of processors.
I can see the other Taiwanese manufacturers is very difficult to propose original solutions for their products, diverse than the others. What I typically do is implement more USB ports and SATA storage subsystem or a more complex, but this involves having to depend on from third-party vendors and not to develop its technology inside. Asus, therefore, want to stick in a different way not only being able to implement all the ancillary devices that are adopted by other producers in Taiwan, but also use proprietary chips by which provide a richer experience to their customers.
At present we have developed two chips, or co-processors, which are clear and to answer two distinct needs by our customers. On the one hand have higher speed performance and the other as low as possible power consumption. In the future the number of owners dedicated chip can only increase, so as to better differentiate our product range from that of competitors.
speech very similar to what has been done for the motherboard must also be developed for video cards, an area in which the demand from consumers has become even stronger in order to have a higher speed performance and on the other side have a maximum consumption. The especially high-end video cards have become, in recent years, the higher the consumption component inside a PC, exceeding the processor, Asus is therefore important to develop proprietary solutions that allow its best to contain the overall consumption of the video card and consequently the entire system.
Optimizing the performance point of view has been taken forward through the development of special versions of video cards are unique on the market, a direct example occurred during the past year with the solutions Ares and Mars, respectively, for AMD and NVIDIA GPU, with which Asus has developed solutions to two GPUs on a single PCB very different from the reference design for the manufacturer of the GPU, achieving new levels of performance reference.
Both companies have their own agenda with well-default timing for the launch of new solutions. What I have seen is that in recent years both have Asus approached with greater freedom, allowing us to develop custom solutions quickly and then to develop our ideas. Why did this happen? I believe that NVIDIA and AMD Asus recognize a partner able to offer the best, thanks to its ability to innovate and differentiate with respect to standard solutions, their innovations in terms of GPU.
Il futuro dei componenti in un mondo che punta al mobile
Il mercato si sta sempre più spingendo verso una convergenza, con al centro le soluzioni mobile. E' sufficiente conssiderare l'interesse verso smartphone e tablet per avere conferma di come il vasto pubblico si stia progressivamente allontanando da un concetto tradizionale di PC. Credi che questo avrà impatti sul mercato dei componenti e in che misura?
Proviamo a immaginare quello che sarà il futuro del mercato dei componenti da qui a 4-5 anni: quali sono le tue ipotesi a riguardo?
source: business magazine
Già da 5 o 6 anni a questa parte gli operatori si domandano se il mercato dei componenti non sia soggetto ad andare incontro ad una naturale riduzione dei volumi complessivi sul mercato. Quello che abbiamo verificato internamente in Asus è che non sia così: negli ultimi 3-5 anni il component market is in fact unchanged, confounding the predictions of contraction initially used. The market for solutionsnot believe that the process of continuous integration of components within the most recent Intel and AMD could have a direct impact on the component market? In many cases the drive fails to update the system, since all the basic features and most of those are advanced already provided by your processor component within the integrated GPU.
desktop PC, according to some recent analysis, it is intended to record positive growth over the next two years after that for a certain period of time recorded negative annual rates. This will obviously have a direct impact on the component market. The predicted growth will be mainly on the commercial market, which in recent years has greatly slowed its rate of purchase and upgrade of products because of the international economic crisis, with positive repercussions not only for OEMs but also for the so-called Systems "clone", commonly known as "assembled".
The demand for components for the upgrade of branded systems, ie from the leading OEM, continues to remain interesting. Many Asus components are then sold to those customers who want to adapt your system to the needs of a new title and at the same time do not want to buy a PC from scratch.
It 's true that technological development has enabled the integration of processors within an increasing number of components and functionality, and this has implications for selling components. On the other hand, with increasing technological complexity of products is to increase the desire of users, performance and functionality built into your PC, so it is for this reason that the component market will continue to have their own space and a well-defined demand from customers.
I therefore believe that the users can find in the potential prestazionali offerte dalle CPU con GPU integrata delle piattaforme ideli per le loro necessità di calcolo. D'altro canto per altri utenti l'evoluzione tecnologica continuerà a rivestire un ruolo di prim'ordine
In Asus abbiamo svolto recentemente uno studio interno per capire quale sarà il futuro del mercato dei componenti, delineando uno scenario che definiamo "DIY 2.0" (nota: DIY è acronimo di Do It Yourself, termine con il quale si indica l'installazione o l'aggiornamento di un sistema in proprio e non attraverso l'opera di a dealer). To explain this I am thinking back a few years ago, many people fans not only bought parts to build PCs for your use, but help friends and acquaintances in doing this, being able to take advantage of the knowledge acquired over time.
We believe that a similar dynamic may occur in the coming years, as indicated by the name of "DIY 2.0", but with some significant changes concerning evveniva in the past. The modernization and new construction of a PC can take place involving an ever larger number of potential users only through a gradual simplification of procedures for the installation. From the producers of components will be therefore necessary to work in a direction that allows the complexity of combining the latest technology with ease of interaction from users.
An approach of this kind have both traditional internal components to a PC, and all incidental external devices. The spread of mobile devices with which to access the web is creating space for the development of a whole series of these accessories that can be combined to test the inexperienced user. A simple example is that of a router for wireless access in your home: If this device is designed in such a way that a user has to simply connect it to power and turn it on, leaving an automated procedure for the correct configuration of the wireless connection provider and the specific wireless network, it yields both a better experience for consumers and a new vehicle sales for retailers who can provide a package serve its customers.
source: business magazine
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