ASRock Inc. is a Taiwanese manufacturer of

motherboard A motherboard (also called mainboard, main circuit board, mb, mboard, backplane board, base board, system board, logic board (only in Apple computers) or mobo) is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expand ...

s, industrial PCs and

home theater PC A home theater PC (HTPC) or media center computer is a technological convergence, convergent device that combines some or all the capabilities of a personal computer with a software application that focuses on video, photo, audio playback, and ...

s (HTPC). Founded by Ted Hsu, it was founded in 2002 and is currently owned by Taiwanese electronics company

Pegatron Pegatron Corporation () is a Taiwanese electronics manufacturing company that mainly develops computing, communications and consumer electronics for branded vendors. It also develops, designs and manufactures computer peripherals and components. ...

History

ASRock was originally spun off from Asus in 2002 in order to compete with companies like

Foxconn Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd., trading as Hon Hai Technology Group in China and Taiwan and Foxconn internationally, is a Taiwanese multinational electronics contract manufacturer established in 1974 with headquarters in Tucheng, New T ...

for the commodity OEM market. Since then, ASRock has also gained momentum in the

DIY "Do it yourself" ("DIY") is the method of building, modifying, or repairing things by oneself without the direct aid of professionals or certified experts. Academic research has described DIY as behaviors where "individuals use raw and sem ...

sector and plans for moving the company upstream began in 2007 following a successful

IPO An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

on the

Taiwan Stock Exchange The Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation (TWSE; ) is a financial institution, located in Taipei 101, in Taipei, Taiwan. The TWSE was established in 1961 and began operating as a stock exchange on 9 February 1962. It is regulated by the Financial S ...

. It was acquired by

in 2010. As of 2011, ASRock is the world's third largest motherboard manufacturer, having cooperated with professional

esports Esports, short for electronic sports, is a form of competition using video games. Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, individually or as teams. Although orga ...

player

Johnathan Wendel Johnathan Wendel (born February 26, 1981), more commonly known by his online alias Fatal1ty (pronounced "Fatality"), is an entrepreneur and former professional esports player of the first-person shooter titles '' Quake'' and ''Painkiller.'' He ...

in the development of a gaming-oriented enthusiast motherboard in 2011. ASRock established itself as a server motherboard affiliate in April 2013, having received orders from 10 mid-size clients for server and industrial PC motherboards and forming partnerships with system integrators.

Products and services

Besides motherboards, ASRock also sells desktop

minicomputers A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller general purpose computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, ...

. Three ASRock products were short-listed for the 2012 Taiwan Brand Award for the first time, and then became endorsed products of the External Trade Development Council when they were promoting the quality image of Taiwan brands globally. In 2012, ASRock stepped into the industrial PC and

server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides functionality for other programs or devices, called clients Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending customers and su ...

motherboard market. ASRock began developing

graphics cards A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or mistakenly GPU) is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display device, such as a computer moni ...

in partnership with

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...

in 2018 as a result of the surge in

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mining.

Market coverage

ASRock is the world's third-largest motherboard brand and the distribution channels cover electronics stores, PC stores, gadget retailers, and online shops. Major sales regions in 2011 included Europe for 37.68%, Central and South America accounted for 21.13%, the Asia Pacific region accounted for 40.95% and other markets accounted for only 0.24%. As a whole, ASRock accounted for a large proportion of sales in Asia and Europe in terms of overall performance. The Top 3 Motherboard Brand * Korea: ASRock is the No.1 brand according to the Korea motherboard market share analysis in June 2012 (61% market share). * Japan: ASRock ranked No.2 in Japan.

Market share overview

According to the annual report for Digitimes 2011, ASRock has been growing very fast in the past few years. ASRock has been one of the top 3 motherboard brands for 2 consecutive years. (''Note: MSI and ECS' OEM shipments are not included in the figures. Source: Companies and market watchers, compiled by Digitimes, November 2012'')

Reception

ASRock received a ''

Tom's Hardware ''Tom's Hardware'' is an online publication owned by Future plc and focused on technology. It was founded in 1996 by Thomas Pabst. It provides articles, news, price comparisons, videos and reviews on computer hardware and high technology. The si ...

'' 2012 Recommended Buy Award for their X79 Extreme4 motherboard, and also won the Xbit labs 2012 Editor Recommended Award with Z77 Extreme4. Furthermore, ASRock Z68 Extreme7 Gen3, Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3 and the mini PC series was awarded three 2011 Taiwan Brand Awards. ASRock is also the first and only manufacturer of a Mini ITX-sized X99 chipset-based motherboard, the X99E-ITX/ac. It supports Haswell-E and Broadwell-E Intel Core i7 and Haswell-EP Intel Xeon CPUs with CPU core support up to 18 cores.

Notes

References

External links

* {{Electronics industry in Taiwan 2002 establishments in Taiwan Companies based in Taipei Computer enclosure companies Electronics companies of Taiwan Manufacturing companies established in 2002 Motherboard companies Taiwanese brands Graphics hardware companies Taiwanese companies established in 2002