Asus, A Company Too Small, But Still Too Big

Sure, I know that title makes little sense, but that conveys the strange tale of the AsusTek company, one that was just recognized as building the very best consumer motherboards, and a maker of various other computer parts, both for the retail, and the OEM, spaces.

And that is the problem. Asus could be much larger than it is, but the really big names, IBM, HP, and Dell, have requested (rather forcefully) that the company not compete so vociferously with them; that is, if they also wanted to supply the guts for the computers of that same big 3.

The story is further examined by Bright Side of News, though a bit of English mangling will slow you down, the story is a tale of what is happening in the world of the really big suppliers.

It looks like Dell got what they wanted when the company requested that ASUS splits its OEM and Retail business, when ASUS-branded products started to attack the markets that used to belong to the big three: IBM, HP and Dell. ASUS complied, separated the OEM business into PEGATRON business unit - initiating a war for power between two founders of the original company: Johnny Shih and Tung Tsu Hsien.

Seven months ago, Taiwanese magazine Business Today ran a story how the power struggle between ASUSTeK and Pegatron is tearing the company apart [PDF Download], detailing the sad story how Johnny Shih and his right hand Jerry Sheng managed to oust Tung Tsu Hsien to Pegatron. Given the fact that TweakTown has the English translation of this article, it might be a good idea to read it .

Further, it states that the spun off company, Pegatron, is now to be sold, yet the company’s head, and major stockholder in Asus, doesn’t want the company spun off or sold. This same tale has occurred before, with a company you may have heard of called Foxconn. Foxconn used to be that unkown company that OEM’ed huge numbers of products yet only industry insiders knew their name. That is the way that Compaq, and others who used them as OEM, liked it. And those series of product were very, very reliable, if sometimes a bit out of touch with PC standards. This is a far cry from the less-than-stellar Foxconn of today.

It may be a source for glee at the big 4, which now includes Acer, but it shows how volatile the landscape is in the land of computer manufacturing, and why companies that were once huge (can you say Abit, boys and girls?) have become non-existent. It is not always about sales.

If Asus succumbs to the inner forces of doom, we will all lose, as no one company seems at the ready to take over as such a large supplier of the highest quality products to anyone with money.

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