4 ms·

> In 2005, suddenly, for no reason at all, an official press release appears, voiced by the head of the public relations department of Soltek, in which it appea

> In 2005, suddenly, for no reason at all, an official press release appears, voiced by the head of the public relations department of Soltek, in which it appears in black and white: the Taiwanese company Soltek Computer Inc. stops mass production of motherboards and focuses all resources on the production of computer peripherals. After such a statement, analysts of the global information technology market unanimously stated that this statement is a death sentence for the brand and the company as a whole. I feel there is some crucial background info missing - why would a successful mobo maker suddenly abandon the market?

_nalply 3y ago
Perhaps someone like Elon Musk wreaking havoc in Taiwan?
mpol 3y ago
It could be that there was a process of consolidation starting. Soltek was a small player and for years I simply assumed they could not compete with giants like Asus, Gigabyte and MSI, that were taking the hobbyist market. There was also ECS which was big in the OEM market, building boards for HP and the like. It could be they saw it coming that they would not exist in a few years, it might be that sales and profit were already going down. Just assumptions here, someone else might come along to confirm or deny this. By the way, I bought a Soltek board in 2003 with the then new sata controller. I read the specsheet a bit fast... It said the sata port would do software raid. The pata port would do ata and software raid. Of course this turned out to be true :) Linux crashed too often during busy I/O with regular disks. So I had to buy a separate sata card.
jandrese 3y ago
Maybe it had something to do with Intel shutting out all competing chipset manufacturers? Maybe they figured they couldn't differentiate in a marketplace where you were forced to buy the Intel or AMD chips?

4 ms·

> In 2005, suddenly, for no reason at all, an official press release appears, voiced by the head of the public relations department of Soltek, in which it appea

by MrBuddyCasino 3y ago

_nalply 3y ago
Perhaps someone like Elon Musk wreaking havoc in Taiwan?
mpol 3y ago
It could be that there was a process of consolidation starting. Soltek was a small player and for years I simply assumed they could not compete with giants like Asus, Gigabyte and MSI, that were taking the hobbyist market. There was also ECS which was big in the OEM market, building boards for HP and the like. It could be they saw it coming that they would not exist in a few years, it might be that sales and profit were already going down. Just assumptions here, someone else might come along to confirm or deny this. By the way, I bought a Soltek board in 2003 with the then new sata controller. I read the specsheet a bit fast... It said the sata port would do software raid. The pata port would do ata and software raid. Of course this turned out to be true :) Linux crashed too often during busy I/O with regular disks. So I had to buy a separate sata card.
jandrese 3y ago
Maybe it had something to do with Intel shutting out all competing chipset manufacturers? Maybe they figured they couldn't differentiate in a marketplace where you were forced to buy the Intel or AMD chips?