"Although Gigabyte Technology recently reduced its annual motherboard shipments goal from 20 million to 19 million units, shipments from the company's branded segment will still reach 16.5 million units, an increase of around 18% compared to 14 million last year, according Richard Ma, vice president of the company.

Due to the low gross margins in the OEM sector, Gigabyte started reducing OEM orders from the beginning of 2008 and is now mainly focused on branded motherboard sales.

Ma said he expects motherboard shipments in the fourth quarter will see an obvious decline as demand failed to recover from October as predicted earlier.

Ma forecast a further fall in demand in the first half of 2009 and said he is therefore conservative about the company's motherboard segment performance in 2009.

The company is also conservative about graphics card shipments expecting to ship 3.5 million units in 2008, a drop around 10% compared to 2007 mainly due to unstable memory prices.

Gigabyte is planning to launch three new netbooks with built-in 3.5G modules in the first quarter of 2009 and will work on developing its industrial design. The company will also revise its handset lineup in 2009 and will consider cutting into the market with different concepts, said Ma.

Currently, Gigabyte's notebooks are manufactured by Quanta Computer, while netbooks are produced in-house and Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) are outsourced to Compal Electronics.

Ma said he believes further impact from the economic crisis will start appearing at the beginning of 2009, and so the company's goal in the fourth quarter of 2008 is to clear inventory."