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ASUS CEO Resigns as Company Shifts Mobile Focus To Power Users (engadget.com)
Earlier today, ASUS announced that long-time CEO Jerry Shen is stepping down ahead of "a comprehensive corporate transformation" -- part of which involving a new co-CEO structure, as well as a major shift in mobile strategy to focus on gamers and power users. From a report: In other words, we'll be seeing more ROG Phones and maybe fewer ZenFones, which is a way to admit defeat in what ASUS chairman Jonney Shih described as a "bloody battlefield" in his interview with Business Next. During his 11 years serving as CEO, Shen oversaw the launch of the PadFone series, Transformer series, ZenBook series and ZenFone series. Prior to that, Shen was also credited as the main creator of the Eee PC, the small machine that kickstarted the netbook race in 2006.
Co-CEO? That seems a little strange, I wonder how that will work out.
Apple realized long ago a battle at the low end is one that leaves no victors.
It's a good idea to focus on finding and winning over people who are willing to pay for extra power and features. The other benefit of that approach is you are likely to find more loyal users, if you go chasing after people who ignore specs and value and just chase the cheapest model, they will have zero brand loyalty and may well not purchase your phones again when upgrading.
To win over repeat customers means putting money into design and build that knock you right out of contention at the low end of the market.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
His netbook move was not vain.
I still have one. 32 bits celeron working OK with a small Linux distro. I use it as a calculator for lab related stuff. Back in the day, a Linux compatible portable computer sold for cheap without the Microsoft tax was big news.
The dude was basically the polar opposite of Steve Jobs. Cringeworthy mobile projects, cringeworthy presentation of said products. I hope they appoint someone better than that. Their laptop lineup is second to none right now. I'm posting this from an X1 running Linux.
Everyone's making the same phone - ever increasing screen size, gimmicks like fingerprint reader front or back or under screen, everyone's removing microSD slots, headphone jacks, using the same set of LCD/OLED panels and other components. If they don't want to make something that caters to smaller but real markets (outdoor activities, smaller phones, and in this case, gamers), then they're competing with bigger companies that can throw $$$ into buying customers. So I guess this is good for them... except they aren't ever going to make a phone that's as good as even a gaming laptop... so it is really just for mobile power gamers. I'd have gone for a bigger or multiple niches.
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Asus is going after higher end mobile users, I am expelling why so people like you might understand why.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
From a computer technician point of view (and my personal opinion) they are SO FUCKING BADLY designed. All the asus laptops that I worked with just took more time for nothing and it felt like all of them could break easily. they material was made cheap.
I mean, just to replace a hard drive was a nightmare imo. I had to remove the entire bottom plate and sometimes the keyboard as well and this is just to replace to access it. Jesus Christ, take a look at the lenovo laptops and at least copy their design to access parts that should take 20 seconds to replace ffs. ()
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The Macbooks are (currently) made by Quanta. They're an ODM - original design manufacturer. That's like an OEM, except they also design the product. They're the ones who came up with such innovations like hogging a unibody laptop chassis out of a single solid piece of aluminum, not Apple. Slashdot had an article describing how they bought the CNC milling machinery, were playing around with hogging out aluminum billets, and pitched the idea to Apple. Quanta also makes laptops for pretty much every other laptop brand out there, so no, Apple doesn't have a monopoly on quality. I always tell buyers that about the only thing the brand name tells you is what sort of aftermarket support you'll get.
Asus also started off as an ODM too. They made the old Powerbooks and the plastic Macbooks, as well as a few other Apple devices. They spun off their ODM division as Pegatron (the company founder likes Pegasus - both company names are derived from it) a decade ago due to complaints from their customers about conflict of interest (they also sold laptops under the Asus brand). Likewise, the iPhones are made by Foxconn, which is probably more widely known due to PR managers at Apple dumping blame for all the bad things that happen to iPhones onto Foxconn in order to preserve the Apple brand name.
The only hardware Apple makes is their processor. Everything else is made by other companies. Memory by Samsung and SK Hynix. Flash storage by Samsung and Toshiba. Screen by Samsung and LG, camera by Sony, etc. Apple just hires an ODM and gives them the general design specs they want it to meet. The ODM makes the product, buying parts that are available to all other brand names, and packages them together into a whole. Just like every other brand name. There is no magic unicorn dust inside. Sorry to burst your bubble.
What Apple figured out is the Gucci effect. If you develop a strong brand name, people will pay extra to buy it regardless of features or quality.
The client computer market (think desktop, Laptop, workstation, gamers, ultrabook, etc) is ripe for consolidation. Only Dell, HP Ink and apple, have decent margings there (tow of them because economies of scale, the other because is able to charge a premium for the product, this written on a Macbook Air).
A consolidatation of players is long overdue. In japan, is already happened. NEC sold its client computer arm to Lenovo. Fujitsu separated their PC arm (which itself was the merger of fujitsus and Siemes client computing arm), So did toshiba. Sony divested the Vaio Group (low sales and earnings) and that was acquired by a private equity group which in turn tried to merge the three of them to no avail. Fujistu tired of waiting and flogged the whole thing to Lenovo...
Asus shoud follow suit and merge, perhaps with arch-nemesis Acer. God knows both companies need the economies of scale to make this work.
Failing that, any other of the top 7 companies will do. in the Client PC game, economies of scale are one of the most important factors, and short of Dell, HP and Lenovo, no one has enough economies of scale to do good in that game. Either merge on your own volition, or be absorved after a Chapter 7 , chapter 11 or administration proceedings
Just my two cents.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
It sounds hilarious.
It actually worked well for the Roman *Republic* for nearly five centuries.
"A consul held the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic (509 to 27 BC), and ancient Romans considered the consulship the highest level of the cursus honorum (an ascending sequence of public offices to which politicians aspired).
Each year, the citizens of Rome elected two consuls to serve jointly for a one-year term. The consuls alternated in holding imperium each month,[citation needed] and a consul's imperium extended over Rome, Italy, and the provinces. However, after the establishment of the Empire (27 BC), the consuls became mere symbolic representatives of Rome's republican heritage and held very little power and authority, with the Emperor acting as the supreme authority."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Apple realized long ago a battle at the low end is one that leaves no victors."
Except for the victors it leaves, of course. If there were no victors there would be no low end.
When the most successful party has 87% of the industry profits and the distant second place has 10% then you have one victor and one intact survivor. What could we call the remaining market participants? "Beleaguered?" :-)
... Samsung came in second in smartphone operating profits with 10% of total industry profits"
https://www.investors.com/news...
"Apple (AAPL) captured 87% of smartphone industry profits in the fourth quarter, despite accounting for only about 18% of total units sold in the period.
The ASUS sub on Reddit is filled with stories detailing horrible customer support. If the new CEO doesnâ(TM)t put some effort into improvements in that area their time selling expensive components to gamers will not last very long.
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
So Quanta has the parts and manpower needed to do things like prototype milling? While Apple do not?
Not that scale is mentioned, which is imported if you need to do 1000 different prototypes in a reasonable time scale.
Thats the gist of it, at the least as Solandri presents it.
I see one fail and I call yours also! Google is not your friend, pal. It ain't your pal, chum. It ain't even your chum, buddy. Calm down. No you calm down. I am calm. Then everybody's calm. REAL calm. The calmest.
Now I sell all your private information, and you watch an ad. Pow, right in the kisser, friend.
If I could, I'd mod you funny.
then I guess Duck-Duck-Go is your friend. Or perhaps Yandex (wink).
Failing that, please sugest a search engine which is also "our friend"
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
I'm considering the Asus ROG phone, Razer Phone 2, and Black Shark Helo for my next phone. Make a landscape slider keyboard addon for the ROG phone and you'll get an instant niche of power user customers - all the people still using Droid 4s, Photon Qs and even Maemo phones like the N900.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Apple is a big winner on the software side too. 2/3rds the number of iOS app downloads generates five times the amount of revenue as Android apps.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/t...
that's mega, not giga. I can't bear to part with it even though I have no use for it now. It's a wonder of technology and mankind's genius rendered completely obsolete.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
So, hey Asus!
I've got two thousand US dollars with your name on it, if you can build a genuine flagship Android phone with a removable/replaceable battery, an IP68, resilient plastic body, headphone jack, all sensors, 6+gb ram, the fastest processor money can buy, IR blaster, etc. Big, thick, heavy, with absurd battery life (say .. 8,000mAh).
There hasn't been an legitimate flagship phone since the Note 3/4 and I've been saving a long time.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
I've had a ROG laptop for about 3 years now, no problems here. Can't say much about their support, though, never needed it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The Macbooks are (currently) made by Quanta. They're an ODM - original design manufacturer. That's like an OEM, except they also design the product. They're the ones who came up with such innovations like hogging a unibody laptop chassis out of a single solid piece of aluminum, not Apple. Slashdot had an article describing how they bought the CNC milling machinery, were playing around with hogging out aluminum billets, and pitched the idea to Apple. Quanta also makes laptops for pretty much every other laptop brand out there, so no, Apple doesn't have a monopoly on quality.
I always tell buyers that about the only thing the brand name tells you is what sort of aftermarket support you'll get.
This is exactly why I tell people not to buy Apple. My work Dell has a melt down, they send me a replacement, I swap the disk and send back the dead one. A Mac has a meltdown and I have to go to an apple store and wait for them to deign to see me.
What Apple figured out is the Gucci effect. If you develop a strong brand name, people will pay extra to buy it regardless of features or quality.
Exactly, Apple is a brand. Nothing more, nothing less. If Apple's were priced the same as Dells, and Dell is not a cheap computer brand here in the UK, the Apple would be considered a vastly inferior product.
Now I do own an Asus as a personal laptop. Its got the same spec as the same year MBP except it only cost £750 instead of £:2,600. If anyone is looking for a personal laptop, I couldn't recommend Asus highly enough. My last Asus is still going, the only reason I replaced it was the fact it couldn't run modern games any more (and really, no brand can future proof when it comes to gaming). Maybe not as a work machine as they lack the conveniences of a Dell or Lenovo, like a docking port.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I checked, Qwant Closed down in 2013 or thereabouts
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!