ASRock Inc. () is a Taiwanese manufacturer of

motherboard A motherboard, also called a mainboard, a system board, a logic board, and informally a mobo (see #Nomenclature, "Nomenclature" section), is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expandable systems. It ho ...

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). Established in 2002, it is owned by

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. ...

, a company part of the

ASUS ASUSTeK Computer Inc. (, , , ; stylized as ASUSTeK or ASUS) is a Taiwanese Multinational corporation, multinational computer, phone hardware and electronics manufacturer headquartered in Beitou District, Taipei, Taiwan. Its products include deskto ...

group.

History

ASRock was originally spun off from

in 2002 by Ted Hsu (co-founder of the mentioned company), in order to compete with companies like

Foxconn Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd. (), Trade name, doing business as Hon Hai Technology Group () in Taiwan, Foxconn Technology Group () in China, and Foxconn () internationally, is a Taiwanese multinational corporation, multinational electron ...

for the commodity OEM market. Since then ASRock has also gained momentum in the DIY sector with plans for moving the company upstream beginning 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 ...

. In 2010 it was acquired by PEGATRON, a company part of the ASUS group. 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, played individually or as teams. ...

player

Johnathan Wendel Johnathan Wendel (born February 26, 1981), also known as Fatal1ty (pronounced "Fatality"), is an American entrepreneur and former professional esports player. He made his professional debut at a 1999 Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) tourn ...

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

minicomputer A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a type of general-purpose computer mostly developed from the mid-1960s, built significantly smaller and sold at a much lower price than mainframe computers . By 21st century-standards however, a mini is ...

s. 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 requested information for other programs or devices, called clients. Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending custome ...

motherboard market. ASRock began developing

graphics cards A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics accelerator, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or colloquially GPU) is a computer expansion card that generates a feed of graphics output to a displa ...

in partnership with

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a hardware and fabless company that de ...

in 2018 as a result of the surge in

cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency (colloquially crypto) is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. Individual coin ownership record ...

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 s ...

'' 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.

References

External links

* {{ASUS, state=expanded, computers=yes, tablets=yes, phones=yes, other1=yes, other2=yes, below=yes Asus 2002 establishments in Taiwan 2007 initial public offerings Corporate spin-offs Companies based in Taipei Computer companies of Taiwan Computer enclosure companies Computer hardware companies Computer systems companies Electronics companies of Taiwan Electronics companies established in 2002 Motherboard companies Taiwanese brands Graphics hardware companies Taiwanese companies established in 2002 Companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange