Motherboards

Last year, it seemed that this segment was more or less a one horse race, with Intel being the winner and Kobian (Mercury) trailing far behind. This year though Kobian has moved out, two other players, Asus and Gigabyte have managed to enter the club. None of the other players came anywhere in the reckoning. Intel still enjoys a high degree of brand loyalty amongst its existing motherboard users. Asus and Gigabyte, on the other hand, needs to work harder to improve their brand loyalty, as almost 30% of their existing users want to shift to Intel. Asus was in the similar situation last year. 

Here again, the maximum shift is likely to happen to Intel followed by Asus and then Gigabyte. Intel enjoyed maximum support from the North and West, while Asus received maximum support from the East and South. 

Gigabyte got the maximum support from the North, and lowest response from the West. While Intel still has a huge lead, competition in the motherboards arena is becoming increasingly stiff. New players like MSI, and graphics cards supremos ATI and nVidia have become active in the motherboard space. There's lots of innovation happening in this market, with manufacturers introducing feature- rich boards in the attempt to outdo each other.