Motherboards are quite an integral part of deliveringthe overall computing experience to theconsumer. We at CellIT and taking a deep dive into what the next generation motherboards are set to deliver and what are the present trends that are governing the business dynamics of this segment.
Indian Market Scenario As per the views of Rajshekhar Bhatt, Country Manager, ECS, “Good part is India’s PC penetration is very low but at the same time PC market is not growing the way it was expected to be & there are many reasons to it. As per the our vision & mission statement we would like to offer right product at an affordable price & offer more features than what our competition can offer for same price with better or equally reliable product,” he explains.
Vinay Shetty, Country Head, ASUS Technologies Pvt. Ltd, Open Business Group says that in India, the entry level segment is the main driving force for motherboard sales. “However, we’ve noticed the mid and high-end segments are not too far behind. Game developers, studios and professional musicians are just some of the crowd that are consuming ASUS high-end motherboards and are increasing day by day. This is big chunk of the market that hasn’t been explored to its fullest yet,” he explains.
Key Focus
Sunil Grewal, Director, GIGABYTE Technology India says that the big focus area for us presently is the mushrooming DiY (Do-It-Yourself) market in the Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. These regions are from where the most demand for the DiY PC is coming from.The markets here, which was till a few years back, dominated by box-pushers, are witnessing a growing breed of resellers who are providing customised PC systems.
“End-users there are becoming more tech-savvy and are demanding systems with their preferred configurations. Only cost is not only the criteria for buying the PC anymore. High performance rig, with quality features, supported by worldclass post-sales services is fine with these emerging customers – even if they have to pay a bit more for these.
GIGABYTE motherboards, with its power-saving technologies and innovative features, have a lot to offer consumers, who are increasingly demanding PC systems with improved performance and high durability.
GIGABYTE is also focusing on offering motherboards that address and tackle the prime concerns of the average Indian PC user – humidity, high temperature, power failures and static electricity. GIGABYTE motherboards, with their unique Ultra Durable technology (the name we have given for our quality standards), are designed to overcome these concerns. This means our motherboards are not only efficient in terms of performance and power consumption, but are also capable of keeping your PC safe and long-lasting.” He adds on.
While speaking about its core focus of operations, Manoj Kriplani, Country Manager, Asrock, India says, ”We only believe in giving High quality products to our channel partners and end users. We don’t compromise with quality by cutting cost like other competitors do. Whereas we always strive for value addition to our products and satisfaction of our valued customers. India Total market is somewhere 1.4 – 1.5 Million / Year, and we have 15% of market share,” he informs.
Rajshekhar Bhatt, Country Manager, ECS, says that the market share of ECS is 27%. “We are the second largest motherboard vendor in India. This based on total number of Motherboards being imported or sold by different brands in India,” he informs.
Trends in MoBos
Sunil Grewal, Director, GIGABYTE Technology India says that, these are some of the trends that are gaining popularity in the motherboard market.
Mini ITX Form Factor: Mini ITX form factor devices are progressively making their mark in mainstream market. Mini-ITX products are finding bigger market acceptance with the rising demand for HTPCs (Home Theatre Personal Computers) and also, SFF (Small Form Factor) PCs. Coming to Mini-ITX form factor-based motherboards, the popularity of this motherboard type is likely to enhance further mainly because it is power-efficient, economical, and occupy less space, while guaranteeing superior performance. Product Features in Demand: Indian users are ever more preferring motherboards with HDMI and USB 3.0 ports, and SATA3; and those which support DDR3 and SSD drives.
While HDMI ports are generally used for HTPCs to connect to TVs, USB 3.0 ports are becoming one of the very fundamental needs for even lower-end motherboards because even entrylevel users these days insist on faster transfer speeds.
Products Catering to Needs of the Average Indian PC User: Products addressing the major worries of the average Indian PC user will become more accepted. These worries are humidity, high temperature, power failures / fluctuations and static electricity. Motherboards should come with technologies, which protect PCs and their components from these everyday threats faced by the Indian user.
Motherboard companies should be dedicated to offering quality motherboards with not only competence in terms of performance and power consumption, but which are also capable of keeping the user’s PC and components safe and long-lasting.
Gaming Motherboards: The gaming sector is seeing a double digit growth since the last few years. PC-based gaming is a major component of this growth, which is fuelled mainly by the consumers’ rising affinity for leisure gaming activities, and of course the rise in disposable incomes. In this context, we foresee a rising demand for gaming PCs, which is good news for vendors of gaming-specific components and peripherals. Moreover, the gaming sector is yet to be tapped effectively by vendors. PC motherboard manufacturers have started offering a lot more gaming motherboards in India than what they used to, a couple of years back.
“With the HTPC concept gaining fast popularity in India, we recently launched the GIGABYTE BRIX, our range of ultra-compact and versatile DIY PC kit. The GIGABYTE BRIX comes as an attractive solution especially because it optimizes power consumption, while offering a lot of processing power and connectivity in a form factor that is small enough to be placed anywhere – whether on your desk or even within you home entertainment setup
Mini-ITX systems are gradually becoming popular in India, especially among those who seek an HTPC build or have limited space for their rig. There are only a few Mini-ITX motherboards available today in India, out of which GIGABYTE has the widest range of motherboards in this category. In the Mini-ITX category, our popular motherboards include GA‑Z97N‑WIFI, (the only Mini-ITX currently available in India that comes with dual gigabit (GbE) LAN; GA‑H97N‑WIFI (one of the company’s 9 Series motherboards), and the GA-J1800N-D2H.
GIGABYTE’s Ultra Durable motherboards cater to the requirements of the average Indian user guaranteeing better PC and component protection from the country’s harshest weather, and power conditions. The average Indian PC user is faced with a range of everyday threats, including humidity, moisture, electro-static discharge, sudden power loss and high operating temperature.This is where the GIGABYTE’s Ultra Durable motherboards come into play. GIGABYTE Ultra Durable is a series of innovative technologies that originated with the aim of offering motherboards with high-quality, highly efficient components designed to ensure maximum durability, safety and longevity for today’s high performance motherboards.
In our latest 9 Series motherboards, based on the Intel Z97/H97 Chipset with support for the latest Intel 4th and 5th generation Core processors, we have already launched over 10 Gaming Motherboard models. This is the first time we have launched so many gaming models for any particular chipset series in India. GIGABYE 9 Series gaming motherboards are the only motherboards providing 4-Way SLI and 4-way Cross- Fire extreme graphic card support. In the gaming series, GIGABYTE is the only DIY motherboard with audio OP-AMP technology.
GIGABYTE also has in India, other chipset-based gaming motherboards, such as the GA-X99-Gaming 5P in the GIGABYTE X99 series motherboards; and GA-B85M-Gaming 3 in the GIGABYTE 8 Series motherboards,” Sunil explains.
As per the views of Manoj Kriplani, Country Manager, Asrock, India, consumers nowadays are seeking for more convenient and smarter life. We’ll say the new trend will be focused on USB 3.1 high speed spec and Type-C interface. “What’s more important, Type-C is an integration of all future input and output interfaces. Starting from PC, laptop to smart phone, we believe more and more devices will be implemented with Type-C interface. We’re devoted on developing products which are facilitating human life. ASRock’s new 100 series motherboards are built with the latest technologies. Extreme series is designed for enthusiast and designers with rocksolid stability and performance. Gaming series include everything you need for gaming. Beebox (NUC), the most compact system for building home mini PC. Lastly, turn your smart phone into a universal remote controller with ASRock Gaming G10 router,” he adds on.
Vinay Shetty, Country Head, ASUS Technologies Pvt. Ltd, Open Business Group explains that a large chunk of game development is increasingly outsourced to India.
“This is not just coding but 3D modelling, concept art and even Virtual Reality to an extent. These organisations require purpose–built machines that can take the strain of intensive CPU and GPU work while offering blazing fast connectivity and storage. It’s industries like these that drive us to come up with innovative products. We’ve had gaming oriented motherboards since the past decade and have kept improving upon them with features like 5-Way Optimisation – which automatically assists the user in tuning the performance depending on the task at hand,” he adds on.
Rajshekhar Bhatt, Country Manager, ECS says that the company believes that the gaming segment’s proportion in the motherboard industry will continue to grow in the future.
“We are now seeing increasing number of live broadcast for gaming competition, showing that the number of people watching gaming competition has increased. Therefore, we have a high hope on the gaming market’s future and have placed a lot resource into the development of the LEET. Other IMP aspect will be from factors, new trends like support for SSD, Wifi, Bluetooth capabilities etc.
We designed the LEET series to let gamers know that the products within the series are designed specifically for them and we are designing and adding functions and technologies that they want through the series. The launch of the LEET will be a brand new start for ECS and we are very excited about the strategy. The product series’ name LEET comes from the word elite, a favorite word used among gamers. If you see the logo designed for the series, it represents a fist,showing gamers are ready for competition and its golden color represents ECS’ high-end Golden series product lines. Meanwhile, Durathon 2’s idea comes from two words: Durability and Marathon, we designed the certification system hoping our motherboards’ durability and stability can be similar to running Marathon – long and tough – and through the system, we can also show customers our advantages over product quality.” He explains.
Gaming Computing
According to Sunil Grewal, Director, GIGABYTE Technology India, Gaming is surely picking up in India, and nowadays you come across PC gaming contests being held across the country in colleges, cafes, malls, and community halls. GIGABYTE, which is delighting gamers globally with its G1 Gaming motherboards that feature the industry’s highest standards of onboard features and technologies, is naturally thrilled to do its bit for the Indian gaming enthusiast.
“In addition to making available the best gaming motherboards, we also offer grand platforms for dedicated gamers to showcase his or her skills, by promoting quality gaming events. We have been continuously offering support to entities, such as tech colleges, IT retail outlets, and gaming cafes, which need technology support and sponsorships for holding gaming events, including contests,” he adds on.
According to Vinay Shetty, Country Head, ASUS Technologies Pvt. Ltd, Open Business Group, “Gaming as a profession is finally picking up in India and in a couple of years, E Sports will be a recognised sport as it is countries like South Korea and Europe. ASUS has had a very strong sub-brand known as Republic of Gamers (ROG) which started the trend of gaming motherboards almost a decade ago,” he explains.
Speaking about the gaming segment, Rajshekhar Bhatt, Country Manager, ECS, says that as many motherboard players have started paying their attentions to the gaming market, Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS), as a major motherboard vendor, is also set to expand its gaming business with a new product 100 series motherboard and with its Durathon 2 certification system to guarantee its product quality, the company is eyeing for a better shipment performance in 2015.
“We provide the Durathon 2 is a certification system that is far stricter than the average of the motherboard industry. We use better materials for our motherboards and going through strict tests such as temperature experiment, running from minus 10 to plus 50 degree Celsius, higher than the industry’s standard range between minus 5 to plus 45, to ensure our customers to receive products with quality higher than the standard. Before shipments, our motherboards need to pass more than 1,500 tests including compatibility, functionality, temperature and system boot checks. Through these tests, we are also trying to let customers understand that a trustworthy motherboard needs to be at least able to pass through these examinations before handing to them. The capacitors we used on our motherboards are also higher in grade compared to the market standard. All these demands are aiming to provide our customers products with values surpassing their paid prices. In the future, we will continue to run the Durathon 2 certification and expand tests to ensure our product quality to remain the highest,” he adds on.
Growth with Channels
Manoj Kriplani, Country Manager, Asrock, India says that the company is targeting 20% of Market share in coming year. “We are pretty sure that we can achieve this by giving good After sales support and adding local man power in various region. We have already started working on this and we will separate our distribution as well for different products and category. We are pretty much strong and evenly balanced across India Region, only western India we need to do better,” he explains.
Sunil Grewal, Director, GIGABYTE Technology India “Although PC penetration is still very low in India, we are expecting slow but steady growth in this segment. A major chunk of this growth is going to come from Class B, C and D cities. Many end-users in these regions are yet to buy their first PC. Growth is also expected from entities such as the student community, educational institutions, professionals, and SMEs.
We are an entirely channel focused company. We understand and appreciate the fact that we are where we are because of the trust reposed on us by our channel partners and of course, because of their plentiful support and loyalty towards the GIGABYTE brand.
Fostering and reinforcing relationship with channel partners is the most significant priority for us. We basically have three focus areas for our partners, namely Channel Profitability, Product Innovation, and After-Sales Services.
GIGABYTE is committed to providing every kind of support needed by our partners, be it hosting partner knowledge-sharing meets, providing access to its online GIGABYTE Value Partner Program (GVPP), or increasing its investment in shop branding activities at channel partner retail outlets, especially of those based in Class B and C cities. This is in addition to outdoor branding being carried in the vicinity of IT markets, billboards, metro railway stations and bus shelters, among others.
We will ensure utmost Channel Profitability under any circumstance; provide quick and efficient after-sales services through GIGABYTE Exclusive Service Centres; and run attractive incentive and loyalty program for partners that also include special holiday packages.” Sunil explains.
Vinay Shetty, Country Head, ASUS Technologies Pvt. Ltd, Open Business Group explains, “Gaming motherboards is going to be a major driving force in our growth as well as small form factor builds, where once again we have pioneered with our ‘Impact series’ motherboards. Currently we have our presence in over 350 cities with more than 700 partners in total.”
Rajshekhar Bhatt, Country Manager, ECS explains that, “We still believe Indian PC market has great opportunity to grow, for Desktop market major customers will be Govt, BFSI, BPO’s & other applications & users who would need computing device on their desk. Additionally with our other offering like Mini PC & AIO range we do believe we have right mix of form factors catering to people looking for Lifestyle affordable products for their home & offices.
Channel is an integral part of our value chain, as a company we invest lot of time & money to train, educate our partners. Our whole focus is to offer competitive product with all key features & high reliability to end user& to maintain healthy bottom line for our channel partners.
We insure there is no conflict & price competition between the channel partners & we expand/ add channel partners in high growth market where either there is no focus or less focus by competition, “he adds on.