Bottom line: The world's top four motherboard makers collectively saw shipments decline by more than 10 million units in 2022, in line with broader industry trends. Unfortunately, a serious turnaround might not happen until late this year or in early 2024.
Asus, Gigabyte, MSI and ASRock were among the hardest hit. According to supply chain sources, ASRock saw shipments dip by 55 percent year over year, from around six million units in 2021 to just 2.7 million last year. MSI, meanwhile, shipped 9.5 million boards in 2021 but managed to send out just 5.5 million in 2022, a decline of more than 42 percent.
Asus fared a bit better, from 18 million boards shipped in 2021 to 13.6 million last year (about a 25 percent drop), while Gigabyte realized a 14 percent drop from 11 million units shipped to around 9.5 million.
The "usual suspects" were to blame for the mobo shipment slump including ongoing economic troubles, the move away from cryptocurrency mining and workers returning to offices.
The component report is in line with others we have been hearing about in recent weeks and months regarding the overall health of the PC market. Just last week, Mercury Research said the fourth quarter of 2022 played host to the biggest dip in PC processor shipments in three decades and mirrored a similar result from earlier in the year.
Mercury ultimately concluded that 2022 represented the largest slump ever in the PC CPU industry, with only 374 million CPUs shipped for the full year. That is 21 percent fewer than were shipped in 2021 and notably does not include Arm processors.
Speaking of, Counterpoint Research believes Arm CPUs are poised to capture a significant share of the laptop market. By 2027, one in four laptops sold are forecast to be powered by an Arm chip instead of a traditional x86 processor.
Looking ahead, the hardware market is expected to remain flat before recovery starts near the tail end of 2023 or in 2024.