Lester Lau, Brand Manager of Abit
The merger between Abit and USI gives both Abit and its customers new hope; we're expecting a bigger, better Abit
Abit, well known for its enthusiast line of motherboards, graphics
cards and accessories has announced a merger with Universal Scientific
Industries Co. a smaller arm of ASE Global. Both ASE and its USI
division offer services such as circuit/board design, silicon wafer
probing, engineering tests, material procurement, assembly and a host
of other manufacturing services. USI's responsibilities are more
specific with four major industries: communications, car electronics,
computing, and consumer electronics such as wi-fi communications and
A/V processing.
Abit's merger with USI will allow USI to take advantage of Abit's brand
recognition and channel penetration. As the Abit brand name is well
recognized in the industry, things are expected to be smooth sailing
with ASI/USI at the helm. Some of ASI's customers are:
Philips, Toshiba, Sony, Siemens, LSI Logic, Renesas, Conexant, VIA,
ATI, NVIDIA, Silicon Image, IBM, and AMD just to name a few. USI alone
has 6 large manufacturing facilities that no doubt will be a huge asset
to Abit turning out more products. With 3 facilities in Taiwan, 2 in
China and 1 in Mexico, we can be sure that Abit's TTM (time to market)
performance will satisfy its large customer base of gamers and
enthusiasts.
We had the chance to speak to Abit's Brand Manager, Lester Lau about the merger and asked him a few quick questions:
Can you bring us up to speed on the recently announced Abit-USI merger?
As many are aware of, ABIT has gone through some major financial
restructuring over the past 8 months or so. We have been searching for
a way to bring financial stability back to the organization. A few
months ago, USI, along with several other companies, approached ABIT to
see if there was a way to partner with ABIT and leverage ABIT's brand
and retail presence. USI is a major OEM with strong manufacturing
capabilities and financial stability. Along with a global support
network and diverse product manufacturing experience, we knew that they
were a good fit for ABIT. Now, with the deal finalized, we can finally
turn our focus back to the business of making ABIT products.
USI is actually a smaller branch of ASE Group. How does ASE
affect Abit’s bottom line? Will we see extra additional benefits
to the Abit line due to ASE’s large influence?
The effect of ASE Group is tough to fully calculate at the moment,
as there are still many details to be figured out. What is certain is
that their greater economies of scale will help make ABIT even more
competitive in the marketplace, and also allow us to access a wider
segment of users. Other than the high-end segments that ABIT has
traditionally been strong, we are now looking towards the
mainstream-value segment, and are planning to launch a new series of
products in the second half of the year to address this market.
How does the merger affect the Abit brand? How does the merger affect the Fatal1ty brand?
As far as branding is concerned, the merger will not effect on our
overall strategy. We will continue making products that target both the
overclocking and gaming markets, and with the added clout of USI, we
can also look towards diversifying our product offerings - something
that I'm very much looking forward to as well. In the short term,
however, we will be focusing on our core motherboard business, again
targeting the mid- to high-end segments. The Fatal1ty series in
particular has gotten a lot of attention lately, and we are looking to
launch the next in the series around CeBIT time. With our new USI
partners, we are excited to roll out the next generation of ABIT
products for our users around the world.
Abit has been somewhat in limbo state for nearly a year, with the
company restructuring and going through a financial reorganization. In
terms of products, releases have been slow and there have been some
major misses. However, with a large backing such as USI behind Abit, we
can expect to see major changes and improvements to both Abit's brand
recognition, influence and product development.
Abit's Executive VP states, “The
past 15 months have certainly been trying times for ABIT, and we have to thank
all the ABIT fans around for the world for their undying support throughout
this most difficult period in ABIT’s history. Now, with USI’s manufacturing
excellence and economies of scale, coupled with ABIT Engineering and
innovation, we are confident that our combined resources will produce our most
exciting ABIT products ever. To those who have stuck with us, we thank you --
the best is yet to come.”
Other companies such as Tyan Computer also merged with large entities,
such as Mitac, Taiwan's super conglomerate to give boost to both sales
and channel delivery performance. Tyan has been doing well since the
merger 2 years ago and we should see the same type of benefits with
Abit and USI.
"I'm an Internet expert too. It's all right to wire the industrial zone only, but there are many problems if other regions of the North are wired." -- North Korean Supreme Commander Kim Jong-il
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