Rumor: ECS stops selling consumer motherboards under its own name – update

ECS would like to gradually exit the consumer motherboard market under its own name. The manufacturer would suffer from increased competition from Asus and Gigabyte with declining demand for motherboards.

ECS, or Elitegroup Computer Systems, would no longer market its motherboards under its own name, and this would be a prelude to a departure from the global DIY motherboard market. The rumor comes from DigiTimes, which has good motherboard resources within the Taiwanese tech industry. ECS would still like to make motherboards for OEMs and ODMs, if there is a demand for them.

The company would like to focus on the production of mini PCs under its own name and laptops and tablets for third parties. In addition to falling demand for motherboards worldwide, the move would come from aggressive pricing policies from competitors Asus and Gigabyte. ASRock, MSI and Biostar would also be affected by this.

ECS was founded in 1987 and mainly makes hardware for other manufacturers, such as Acer. Incidentally, ECS is no longer present in the Pricewatch with motherboards, but with its Liva mini-PCs, which seems to support the DigiTimes message.

Update, Thursday, 08.00: ECS says in a statement, among others by Anandtech, that the report is not true. “ECS would never pass up an opportunity to work on DIY motherboards under its own brand name,” is the somewhat obscure message to the company’s partners.