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ASUSTeK Computer Incorporated (Asus) (traditional 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 its brand name Asus (pronounced ah-soo-ss or in IPA), it is listed on both the London Stock Exchange and the 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 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 Inc. (iPod, iPod Shuffle, MacBook), Alienware, Falcon Northwest, Palm, Inc., HP and Compaq.

Corporate Restructuring

Asus is currently in the process of restructuring its operations. The company will be split into three distinct operational units: ASUS, Pegatron, and Unihan. The Asus brand will be used solely for first party branded computers. Pegatron will handle motherboard and component OEM manufacturing. Unihan will focus on non-PC manufacturing such as cases and molding. In the process of restructuring, the highly criticized pension plan restructuring effectively zeroed out the current pension balances. Previous employee contributions were returned.

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.

Read more at Wikipedia.org