Asus

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ASUSTeK computers

logo
legal form Corporation
ISIN TW0002357001
founding 1989
Seat Taipei , Taiwan
management Jonney Shih (Chairman)
Jonathan Tsang (CEO)
Number of employees 5,667 (2019)
sales NT $ 354 billion (2018)
Branch Computer hardware
Website www.asus.de

ASUSTeK Computer Inc. , short: ASUS [ 'eɪsuːs ] ( Chinese  華碩 電腦  /  华硕 电脑 , Pinyin Huáshùo Diànnǎo ) is a large Taiwanese manufacturer of computer hardware based in Taipei . The company is commonly known under the brand name Asus. The company's shares trade on the Taiwan Stock Exchange under the symbol 2357 and on the London Stock Exchange as ASKD . In January 2008 the company was split into the three legally independent divisions Asus, Pegatron and Unihan.

The company offers desktops , laptops , netbooks , mobile phones , network devices , monitors , WLAN routers , projectors , motherboards , graphics cards , optical storage media , multimedia products, peripheral devices , wearables , servers , workstations and tablet PCs . The company is also an original equipment manufacturer .

Asus is the fourth largest PC manufacturer in the world based on 2015 sales.

General

The company has 5,667 employees worldwide (as of April 2019).

The company has branches in Germany , Switzerland , Italy , Great Britain , France , Spain , Russia and the USA as well as a European service center in the Czech Republic . Further branches are planned. The German- Austrian branch based in Ratingen operates as "ASUS Computer GmbH".

history

The company was founded in April 1989 in Taipei ( Republic of China on Taiwan ) by four Acer employees, TH Tung, Ted Hsu, Wayne Hsieh and MT Liao, originally as Acertek. The trade name Asus stands as a symbol for the winged horse Pegasus and is a short form of this word. The short form was chosen to achieve the highest possible position in alphabetically sorted lists.

In 2002 the ASRock brand was spun off in order to compete with companies like Foxconn in the area of ​​the OEM market.

According to the Taiwanese IT daily DigiTimes , a restructuring was carried out at Asus on March 1, 2006 in order to separate business with the Asus brand from the OEM business (especially notebooks).

The company was split into three legally separate companies in January 2008. In the division with the brand name Asus, the company manufactures notebooks, complete systems and PC components for end customers, the Pegatron division is responsible for the OEM business. Computer cases and accessories that are not used directly in computers are manufactured by the Unihan division .

Products

ZX1 mobile phone that emerged from the cooperation with Automobili Lamborghini

The group's product range includes motherboards , graphics cards , sound cards , notebooks , smartphones , barebones , network components , PDAs , servers , monitors and computer cases , as well as cell phones .

Motherboards

In 2008 the company sold 21 million motherboards. This corresponds to around 14% of global demand. ASUS, together with Elitegroup (also 21 million), Gigabyte Technology (19 million) and Micro-Star International (16 million), is one of the four largest motherboard manufacturers in the world.

Asus Eee PC

On January 24th, 2008, the Asus Eee PC mini-notebook was launched in Germany and Austria. The EEE PC division was later expanded into the "Eee Family", which today includes netbooks as well as all-in-one PCs, small microcomputers and tablets.

Asus Lamborghini notebooks and cell phones

In cooperation with the Italian automobile manufacturer Automobili Lamborghini , the company produces the high-priced VX and ZX cell phone and notebook models. The use of high quality materials and numerous Lamborghini crests make the notebooks stand out from the rest of the model range.

Asus Eee Pad

Asus officially presented several tablet computer versions at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in 2011 . Tablets with and without a pull-out keyboard below the screen, with the Nvidia Tegra 2 processor or the Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm and with the Android operating system Honeycomb, which is optimized for tablet computers . The Asus EeePad Transformer Prime , which came on the market in January 2012, was the first tablet in Germany to use an Nvidia Tegra 3 chipset.

Asus Padfone

In April 2012, the Asus Padfone came onto the market, a smartphone that can be used as a tablet and, with the help of accessories, as a netbook .

In October 2012, the company presented the successor Padfone 2 . As with the first generation, it is a smartphone that can be converted into a 10.1-inch tablet by sliding it into a “tablet sleeve” without its own processor. The smartphone alone now has a screen diagonal of 4.7 inches.

In March 2013, the manufacturer expanded the Padfone family with the “Padfone Infinity” with a full HD screen.

Asus ZenFone

In cooperation with Garmin, the first smartphone , Garmin Asus Nüvifone A50 from the Asus brand, was created in German-speaking countries. To date, the company produces smartphones in 4 different product lines. In the case of the brand's phones, innovations like the one in 2019 with the flip camera are brought onto the market.

OEM

As a contract manufacturer, the company manufactures products under the name Asusalpha, which are then sold by brands such as Hewlett-Packard , Sony , Samsung Group , Apple , Dell and Fujitsu Siemens Computers ; the OEM version of the Asus L8400K notebook, better known as Mohaste, was sold by Medion at Aldi .

Apple withdrew parts of its production from Foxconn in the summer of 2013 and placed orders with Pegatron, Asus' OEM division. According to observers from China Labor Watch , the working conditions there are not much better; There, too, there is child labor , excessive working hours, inadequate wages, breaches of safety regulations and mistreatment by management. There, too, laws and regulations of the Apple Code of Conduct for suppliers are broken.

trade

The company sells its products only through dealers and not through direct sales. They are often ordered by the dealer and sent directly to the end customer by Asus. In this context, difficulties arose with the eBay trading platform , where Asus products were sold only € 1 above the purchase price. Asus then initiated countermeasures to protect its dealer relationships.

Cheat driver

The company has always developed its own graphics card drivers and built in its own features for Asus products. In 2000 Asus planned to integrate the so-called "3D SeeThrough" into their drivers. This feature displays textured 3D models as wireframes , so you can see through them. A very useful feature for 3D solo games, but the ranks of the online shooter community ( Counter-Strike , Unreal Tournament , ...) threatened massive protests. Allegedly, Asus stopped developing this driver in 2000.

In May 2001, however, Asus built this technology back into its drivers. Although there was no official way to activate the 3D SeeThrough feature, a few registry entries weren't an obstacle for willing cheaters . After an online petition and a survey on the Asus website (a good 90% voted against the continuation of the 3D SeeThrough technology), the wallhack was removed from the drivers with version 12.40 .

In 2013, the manufacturer tried again to help players. The so-called “Sonic Radar” (see Sonar ) can filter individual, decisive noises from the audio output of a game and display them visually. With the onscreen application, for example, footsteps or shots can be displayed and assigned to a direction. This can have a positive influence on the game.

literature

  • Christoph Neidhart: Silicon Island doesn't want to go under. 80 percent of all laptops are made in Taiwan and yet the IT island hardly has any brand names to show for. The former pioneers are now urgently looking for new business models. In: Tages-Anzeiger . August 20, 2016 ( online [accessed June 25, 2017]).

Web links

Commons : ASUS  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jonney Shih Chairman ( Memento October 10, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Asus Company Profile craft.co, accessed December 18, 2019
  3. ↑ Asustek ComputerShare finanzen.net, accessed on December 18, 2019
  4. ↑ Gal Gadot - ASUS ZenBook Pro (from 0:01:32) on YouTube , June 4, 2018, accessed March 28, 2019.
  5. ↑ a b Sasan Abdi: Asus is formally splitting into three companies. In: News - Economy. ComputerBase GmbH, January 4, 2008, accessed January 5, 2010 .
  6. ↑ Gartner Says Worldwide PC Shipments Declined 8.3 Percent in Fourth Quarter of 2015 . ( gartner.com [accessed March 5, 2018]).
  7. ^ ASUS Computer GmbH. In: Google Maps. Google, Inc., accessed July 31, 2017 .
  8. ↑ Интервью с ASUS. (No longer available online.) HW.by, October 2003, archived from the original on June 26, 2009 ; Retrieved January 5, 2010 (Russian, interview with Alexander Kim).
  9. ↑ Engadget.com ASUS to split OEM business
  10. ↑ Asustek: Restructuring shows determination to separate own-brand and contract manufacturing ( Memento from June 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ↑ Andreas Frischholz: Asus: First notebook from the Lamborghini series. In: News - Hardware. ComputerBase GmbH, May 29, 2006, accessed January 5, 2010 .
  12. ↑ CES 2011: Asus introduces new tablet PCs. Netzwelt.de, January 5, 2011, accessed on January 10, 2011 .
  13. ↑ Tablet-notebook mix: Asus Eee Pad Slider in a short test. Netzwelt.de, January 8, 2011, accessed January 10, 2011 .
  14. ↑ Mini-tablet: Asus Eee Pad MeMO in the short test. Netzwelt.de, January 8, 2011, accessed January 10, 2011 .
  15. ↑ Asus EeePad Transformer Prime in the test: First tablet with Tegra 3. In: netzwelt. January 19, 2012, accessed June 18, 2012 .
  16. ↑ Asus' Padfone comes out in April , Heise, February 27, 2012.
  17. ↑ Asus Padfone 2 officially presented , Mobilegeeks, October 16, 2012.
  18. ↑ asus.com ( Memento from March 1, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  19. ↑ Asus ZenFone 6. Accessed July 7, 2019 .
  20. ↑ Asustek has no plans to spin off OEM notebook business. In: HardwareZone. SPH Magazines Pte Ltd., May 7, 2005, accessed January 5, 2010 .
  21. ↑ sueddeutsche.de September 23, 2013: Uprising against Apple
  22. ↑ Manfred Bertuch, Ernst Ahlers: Mogel drivers for action shooters stopped for the time being. In: heise online. Heise Zeitschriften Verlag, July 20, 2000, accessed January 5, 2010 .
  23. ↑ Manfred Bertuch, Hartmut Gieselmann: Asus asks online gamers about fraudulent drivers. In: heise online. Heise Zeitschriften Verlag, May 17, 2001, accessed on January 5, 2010 .