Wednesday, May 12th 2021

GIGABYTE Gives Public Apology for "Made in China" Mocking After Company Shares Plummet by $550 Million

On Monday, GIGABYTE, a Taiwanese PC manufacturer, has published a blog post that made fun of other component manufacturers for having their products made in China, the "low-cost, low-quality way". According to Bloomberg, who was the first to spot the blog post, which is now removed. According to the report, such a statement had a massive toll on the shares of the Taiwanese company. E-commerce operators in China, like JD.com Inc. and Suning.com Co., have removed GIGABYTE products from their offerings and searching GIGABYTE or "Jijia" (Chinese company name) returned zero results from these websites. This has single-handedly caused the shares of the company to plummet by 10%, wiping away around $550 million worth of market cap.

The original blog post has since been removed, and GIGABYTE has issued a public apology, which you can see here. The translation of the text says that "A few days ago, part of the text content published on our official website is seriously inconsistent with the fact. It is caused by poor internal management of the company. We sincerely apologize for the discomfort caused to you." The company has also noted that it is very proud of "Made in China" products. On a more personal note, it is interesting to see such a strict market response coming from a blog post, and even more interesting to witness this exclusion from the Chinese e-commerce companies.
Sources: Bloomberg, GIGABYTE, via Tom's Hardware
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69 Comments on GIGABYTE Gives Public Apology for "Made in China" Mocking After Company Shares Plummet by $550 Million

#51
Caring1
64KI wonder what happened to the Gigabyte employee that made the insulting remark about Chinese Manufacturing quality? They not only costed the investors a huge drop in market share but probably cost the company a good bit of future revenue and profits.
And gained the company a great deal of free press.
Posted on Reply
#52
Flanker
TheLostSwedeUS forgot about Taiwan
I always wondered if it was a matter of forgetfulness or intentionally used as a gift for a potential puppet
Posted on Reply
#53
TheLostSwede
News Editor
FlankerI always wondered if it was a matter of forgetfulness or intentionally used as a gift for a potential puppet
A bit of both I'd say. There was a reason behind the liberation from the Japanese after all, even though the Chinese civil war ended after WWII. Taiwan was it's own nation again for a short while, but not really recognised by anyone that mattered, kind of like now. That seems to be slowly changing though, as Taiwan is progressing in a way that prevents Western nations from ignoring the island. That and TSMC...
Posted on Reply
#54
Wirko
HemmingstampSame result here. No doubt he'll be assigned to tea making duties for the forseeable future having lost Gigabyte all that money.
Or shot...
Don't take the part that says "wiping away around $550 million worth of market cap" literally; those same millions were made out of thin air in the last ~40 days, apparently since Giga-Byte issued their annual report (which is not public yet). The stock price is still higher than ever before, except for that last month, and is rising. I presume that those who have access to the report have seen a lot of good news in it.

Will China stop buying Gigabyte products? Maybe but if the boycott lasts, it will be because the actual action of moving manufacturing out of China, not because of one carefully-worded, precision-timed blog post by an employee at a carefully chosen low or mid level, followed by a swift and carefully-worded apology.
Posted on Reply
#55
Hemmingstamp
WirkoDon't take the part that says "wiping away around $550 million worth of market cap" literally; those same millions were made out of thin air in the last ~40 days, apparently since Giga-Byte issued their annual report (which is not public yet). The stock price is still higher than ever before, except for that last month, and is rising. I presume that those who have access to the report have seen a lot of good news in it.

Will China stop buying Gigabyte products? Maybe but if the boycott lasts, it will be because the actual action of moving manufacturing out of China, not because of one carefully-worded, precision-timed blog post by an employee at a carefully chosen low or mid level, followed by a swift and carefully-worded apology.
I know how it all works my friend. ;)
Too big to fail. Free money. Behind the scenes it's business as usual.
Posted on Reply
#56
R-T-B
TheLostSwedeDude, stop spread PRC propaganda. This is EXACTLY how the PRC is justifying what they're doing. Oh look, the white man did this in the past, so we have the right to do it as well and no-one can tell us we're wrong. :rolleyes:
I dunno, we do have a lot of shit to sort out over here. This doesn't make what China's doing right, it makes us both wrong.
Posted on Reply
#57
The red spirit
Out of all companies it's Giga pulling this bullshit. They really are in no position to say that, when their RMA is lowest tier and they still make their stuff in China. Also some of their boards ended up being e-waste and their PSUs go boom-boom.
Posted on Reply
#58
Hemmingstamp
The red spiritOut of all companies it's Giga pulling this bullshit. They really are in no position to say that, when their RMA is lowest tier and they still make their stuff in China. Also some of their boards ended up being e-waste and their PSUs go boom-boom.
Yeah. Should be in the worst typo in history category. Sounds politically motivated IMO but let's not go there.
Posted on Reply
#59
The red spirit
HemmingstampYeah. Should be in the worst typo in history category. Sounds politically motivated IMO but let's not go there.
Regarding your post about "too big too fail", is Gigabyte big? I always had an impression that they are basically a small fry in the game or some kind of subsidiary of conglomerate, like Palit and PNY. I never thought that they are actually big or rich, therefore explains why lots of their stuff is cheaper than competition's (particularly in motherboard and GPU market) and often just some random rebrands (PSU market). They skimp on RMA to drive costs down.
Posted on Reply
#60
Hemmingstamp
The red spiritRegarding your post about "too big too fail", is Gigabyte big? I always had an impression that they are basically a small fry in the game or some kind of subsidiary of conglomerate, like Palit and PNY. I never thought that they are actually big or rich, therefore explains why lots of their stuff is cheaper than competition's (particularly in motherboard and GPU market) and often just some random rebrands (PSU market). They skimp on RMA to drive costs down.
They are, Huge in fact with their tentacles all over the tech world and revenues topping almost $70 billion in 2019.

About their RMA skimping. Aren't they all at it when it suits them?
Posted on Reply
#61
bim27142
What goes around comes around.

Don't shoot yourselves in the foot.

Probably their "management" are composed now of trigger happy entitled young ones.
Posted on Reply
#62
PapaTaipei
Funny because gigabyte is also mainly made in china, and not even the good made in china. I always had trouble with their motherboards. If you look at capacitors and other stuffs quality across all motherboards and GPU brands you'll notice that gigabyte always goes for the cheapest while advertising "military grade" stuff.
Posted on Reply
#63
asdkj1740
PapaTaipeiFunny because gigabyte is also mainly made in china, and not even the good made in china. I always had trouble with their motherboards. If you look at capacitors and other stuffs quality across all motherboards and GPU brands you'll notice that gigabyte always goes for the cheapest while advertising "military grade" stuff.
msi asus use "military"
gigabyte uses "ultra duable"/"server grade"

i dont think gigabyte cheaps out on caps on all mobos.
gigabyte use japnese ncc 10k caps and Japanese fp10k caps and poscaps on mid to high range mobo at least on recent high end intel platform.

the mit mkt shit is related to aorus series notebook only.
and yes, gigabyte has factories in china and taiwan as well, so gigabyte has all the data to compare them in terms of quality.
but honestly I don't think gigabyte was intended to attack mic. it seemed gigabyte just wanted to make fun of other brands who have no owned factory to make notebooks only.
it is said that having its own factory is always better than choosing oem / being fabless.
Posted on Reply
#64
The red spirit
asdkj1740it is said that having its own factory is always better than choosing oem / being fabless.
"Real men build fabs" - Jerry Sanders
Posted on Reply
#65
asdkj1740
The red spirit"Real men build fabs" - Jerry Sanders
simple as that.
not saying this is 100% true in terms of built quality/tech/skills, but it is the tradition, I guess.

gigabyte has lots of stuffs oem like ram/case/aio/ssd etc.
what they truly aimed for were brands, not factories nor countries, and of course they must have wanted to stay out of political messes in some country like china.
i think they would still make fun of brands who choose German or japan oem.

fun fact, gigabyte aorus notebook (insisted on made in taiwan) is not the "gigabyte" we talk which is mainly responsible for mobo and gpu nowadays.
there is another subsidiary for notebook business.

and from what I have heard, gigabyte notebook is not that really good even in gaming oriented market.
Posted on Reply
#66
The red spirit
asdkj1740gigabyte has lots of stuffs oem like ram/case/aio/ssd etc.
what they truly aimed for were brands
I would say that they are only known for motherboards ang graphics cards, everything else has nearly zero availability and they clearly don't care about those things. The last time I heard of Gigabyte cases was from this video:

I'm pretty sure that for case like that potential market was somebody like Phil only. On website you can see that they should have some more modern cases, but I have never seen one like that for sale anywhere. The only Giga power supply I ever saw for sale was some cheapo black 500 watt unit, likely not even 80 plus certified. I saw copper SSD from them and that's it. I didn't even know that they make SSDs and memory.

Their AORUS brand is far more important for them so it seems. They pretty much want it to be a proper TUF or ROG competitor, but so far I can say that their brand hardly means anything to potential buyer. I would dare to say that Asrock's Fatal1ty brand used to mean more than AORUS does now.
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