Asus

For other uses, see Asus (disambiguation).

ASUSTeK Computer Incorporated.

File:ASUS.svg
Company type	Public (LSE: ASKD; TSEC:2357)
Industry	Computer hardware Electronics
Founded	1989
Headquarters	Taipei , Taiwan
Key people	Jonney Shih, CEO and Chairman; TH Tung, VP and founder; Ted Hsu, VP and founder
Products	Motherboards, graphics cards, notebooks, PDAs and others (see complete list of categories)
Revenue	NT$541.8 Billion (新台幣5,418億)(2006) (US$16.5 Billion)
Number of employees	97,000
Website	www.asus.com

ASUSTeK Computer Incorporated (ASUS). (Chinese: 華碩電腦股份有限公司) is a Taiwan-based company that produces motherboards, graphics cards, optical drives, PDAs, notebook computers, Servers, networking products, mobile phones, computer cases, computer components and computer cooling systems. Commonly called by their brand name ASUS (pronounced ˈʌsʊs), it is listed on London Stock Exchange and Taiwan Stock Exchange.

History

ASUS was founded in 1989 in Taiwan by TH Tung, Ted Hsu, Wayne Hsieh and MT Liao - all four were computer engineers from Acer. The current CEO and Chairman of ASUS, Jonney Shih, joined the company in 1994. According to the ASUS sales manager, Alexander Kim, the name ASUS originated from Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology. The first three letters of the word were dropped to give the resulting name a high position in alphabetical listings.

In 2004, ASUS was reported to sell more motherboards than three other leading companies combined, reaching 30 million. This number, however, includes rebranding contracts.

In 2005, shipments from ASUS, ECS, Gigabyte, and MSI totaled 104.86 million units. ASUS led with about 52 million units, followed by ECS with 20 million, MSI with 18 million and Gigabyte with 16.6 million. MSI revised its motherboard shipments from an estimate of 16.7 million units to 18 million, according to the company.

ASUS also produces components for other corporations, including Sony (PlayStation 2), Apple Computer (iPod, iPod Shuffle, MacBook), Alienware, Falcon Northwest, HP and Compaq.

Relationship with Intel

In the early 1990s, Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers had not yet established their leading positions in the computer hardware business. Any new Intel processors would have been supplied to better established companies like IBM first, and the Taiwanese companies would be forced to wait for approximately six months after IBM received their engineering prototypes.

When the Intel 486 first came out, the four ASUS founders decided to design their own 486 motherboard without having a 486 processor prototype on site, using only the technical details published by Intel and the experience they gained while making the 386 motherboards. When ASUS finalized their 486 motherboard prototype, they took it to Intel's base in Taiwan for testing. Unsurprisingly, they were not formally greeted when they arrived. It turned out that Intel's own 486 motherboard prototype had recently malfunctioned, and Intel's engineers were still working on the solution. The ASUS founders exercised their experience with the 486 and had a look at Intel's malfunctioning motherboard. Their solution worked, to the Intel engineers' surprise. Intel then tested the ASUS prototype, which functioned perfectly. This marked the beginning of an informal relationship between the two companies - ASUS now receives Intel engineering samples ahead of its competitors.

Asus is one of the main supporters of Intel's Common Building Block initiatives.

Timeline

• September/October 2003: debuts in the cellphone market with the J100 model.
• September 2005: releases their first PhysX accelerator card
• December 2005: enters the LCD TV market with the TLW32001 model, initially only available on the Taiwan market.
• March 9 2006: ASUS is announced to be one of the producers of the first Microsoft Origami models, together with Samsung and Founder. Samsung and ASUS devices expected by April 2006.
• August 8 2006: announced joint venture with Gigabyte Technology
• September 9, 2007 ASUS started to support Blu-ray by announcing the release of BD-ROM/DVD writer PC drive, BC-1205PT. It has been followed by the release of several Blu-ray based notebooks.
• October 31 2007: launched their PDA/smartphone range to the UK market with partners such as DeviceWire

Manufacturing facilities

As of January 2006, ASUS has manufacturing facilities in Taiwan (Taipei, Lujhu, Nankan, Kweishan) and in mainland China (Suzhou), with a monthly production capacity of two million motherboards and 150,000 notebook computers.

Asus Company split announced

In July 2007 it became public that Asus intends to split the company into 3 companies. The current Asus OEM business will split from their branded business under the new names of Pegatron (PC-related manufacturing) and Unihan (casing, modules). Asus itself will concentrate developing the Asus brand.

ASUS original features

ASUS has introduced a number of original features and tools that complemented its products, especially motherboards. The table below lists them, together with some third-party technologies, rebranded under ASUS-specific names (note: the acronym AI, which prefixes many of the feature names, stands for ASUS Intelligence).

Name	Year of Introduction	Product	Description	Patented
AI NET2	YYYY	Motherboards	Diagnoses LAN connection problems before starting the OS
AI NOS	2004	Motherboards	Non-delay Overclocking System. A dynamic overclocking technology	Yes
AI Proactive	2004	Motherboards	a blanket term for all AI enhancements
AI Quiet	2004	Motherboards	Controls speed of fan and processor for a more quiet operation.
Audio DJ	2005	Motherboards and notebooks	Allows playing Audio CDs without turning the computer on. Notebooks supporting this feature normally have play/pause, stop and other control buttons on the front, where they are accessible even when the notebook is closed.
BIOS EZ Flash	2004	Motherboards	Allows update of the BIOS through a non-boot floppy which just contains the new BIOS image. Built-in with the BIOS firmware and can be accessed by pressing ALT+F2 during the power-on self-test
C.P.R. (CPU Parameter Recall)	2004	Motherboards	Automatically restores default CPU settings at reboot when the system fails due to overclocking.
ASUS CrashFree BIOS2	2004	Motherboards	If the BIOS becomes corrupted, CrashFree BIOS 2 allows the user to perform a recovery using the motherboard support CD.
Color Shine (or Colour Shine), Crystal Shine	YYYY	Laptop LCDs	ASUS marketing names for the anti-reflective LCD technology.
GameFace Live	2004?	Graphics Cards	A multi-player audio and video chat solution allowing online gamers to see and talk each other while playing. As of 2006, it is limited to DirectX games and allows up to eight simultaneous players.
GameLiveShow	YYYY	Graphics Cards	Allows gamers to broadcast

See also

• List of Computer System Manufacturers
• ASUS Media Bus
• List of companies in Taiwan

External links

• Official Site
• Linux on Asus Laptops (user experiences)
• Asus FTP in Taiwan - for the most up-to-date drivers. (Asus is very slow to update their subsidiary-sites (e.g. Germany), so check here)