Gigabyte's criticism of "low quality" Chinese manufacturers wipes $550 million off company's...

[midian182]

What just happened? PC hardware giant Gigabyte has seen its share price crash around 25% after making derogatory comments about what it described as cheap and poor-quality products being made in China. The Taiwanese firm has apologized, but the damage may have already been done.

The furor arrived after Gigabyte published a post on its website claiming that its products differed from unnamed rivals who used Chinese manufacturers in a "low-cost, low quality way," reports Bloomberg.

The post didn't go down well in China, obviously. There was outrage on social media, while online retailers JD.com Inc. and Suning.com Co removed the company's product listings—searches for "Gigabyte" or its Chinese brand name, "Jijia," on the platforms returned no results.

Gigabyte has since deleted the post and issued an apology that blames "internal mismanagement." It promises to "conduct a thorough review of [these] inappropriate remarks," adding that its words were "seriously inconsistent with the facts."

"Chinese production helps Gigabyte to create excellent products and high-quality experience[s] for consumers around the world, product quality has stood the test of the market and consumers for many years," reads the translated statement.

Gigabyte's share price over the last five days

Despite the apology, Gigabyte's share price plummeted for two days. It dropping from $4.60 on Monday to a low of $3.34 yesterday, wiping around $550 million off the company's market value.

Bloomberg notes that several companies have been boycotted in China, including Nike and Adidas, though this was over criticism of the country's treatment of Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang. It remains to be seen whether Gigabyte is forgiven in a market with 1.4 billion consumers.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/89666-gigabyte-criticism-low-quality-chinese-manufacturers-wipes-550.html

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[Lounds]

Good time to invest?

 

[fps4ever]

Well, they are not wrong...but feels trumps common sense and the stock market.

 

[FanboysGetPwned]

CCP strikes again.

 

[Achaios]

Gigabyte.

I have owned three defective GPU's from GIgabyte in a row, a 8800 GTS, a GTX 580 SOC and a GTX 780TI GHz Edition.

First card failed 2 months out of warranty and Gigabyte refused RMA on the other 2 GPUs.

Every enthusiast is bound to own 1 or 2 lemon PC parts, but three in a row from the same manufacturer and from different vendors and product generations does not speak well for Gigabyte's quality of manufacture.

The Chinese Palit GTX 1080 Game Rock I own now on the other hand has been going strong for 5 years and will have to do until the GPU market returns back to normal in 2-3 years.

(Igor Wallosek btw had thoroughly reviewed my Palit 1080 and was very, very impressed by its quality of manufacture and quality GPU cooler and load temperatures).

Not bad for a China GPU.

Not a fan of China, just calling a spade a spade.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Anyone partake in the "newegg shuffle"?

I find it funny that Gigabyte is tossing out claims about how Chinese made stuff is low quality when.....

Newegg has been pushing out $hitty Gigabyte PSUs bundled with hard to acquire GPUs - anyone that wants a new GPU is now having to buy horse$hit power supplies that come in DOA or die within a few days of use.

Good job there Gigabyte. Trash talk down companies selling "Chinese made" products when your stuff is so bad it doesn't work when people get it or dies within a few days.

The worst part is that folks that get these combo deals (if you can't even call it a deal), they cannot return the DOA PSU alone for a refund, they have to return everything from the combo to get a refund. So now people are either stuck screwing around with Newegg and getting replacement PSU (which will probably fail like the other did) or they just eat the loss of the extra $100-150 they blew on the GPU/PSU combo.

 

[R00sT3R]

Gigabyte.

I have owned three defective GPU's from GIgabyte in a row, a 8800 GTS, a GTX 580 SOC and a GTX 780TI GHz Edition.

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me...I don't know what to say about someone foolish enough to go back for a 3rd helping.

 

[winjer]

Did someone get fired for this?

 

[arrowflash]

@Achaios

Strange, my experience with Gigabyte products has always been the complete opposite. I consider Gigabyte one of the most reliable and durable brands around. Never purchased a lemon from them and all products from GB I've owned lasted longer than their expected useful life (many still kicking). This goes not only from Gigabyte products I've purchased for personal use, but also for clients and companies I worked for in IT department. The fact that Gigabyte has been complaining about low quality of Chinese components shows to me that it's not a coincidence, they have a true commitment with quality and it only increased my trust in them as a customer.

MSI and Corsair, on the other hand, never again... got plenty of lemons from those, and also plenty of products that died in 8 weeks or less after the manufacturer's warranty expired.

 

[Vulcanproject]

You build something in China because you want it done as cheap as possible, let's face it. If you want higher quality electronics made in Asia then you go to Taiwan, Korea or Japan obviously.

Saying that Taiwanese Gigabyte are hardly paragons of quality all the time and a great deal of their products are banged together on the mainland.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Gigabyte.

I have owned three defective GPU's from GIgabyte in a row, a 8800 GTS, a GTX 580 SOC and a GTX 780TI GHz Edition.

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me...I don't know what to say about someone foolish enough to go back for a 3rd helping.

Ian Fleming has you covered:

"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action."

 

[CommonSenseTech]

Place of manufacture is far less important than method of manufacture.

Plenty of high quality products are made in China, like Apple electronics and Buick cars. Plenty of junk is assembled in the USA, Germany or Japan too. It's the process that determines the quality, not the country of origin, and it's been that way for decades.

 

[PacNWSoundstream]

Gigabyte is throwing stones from a glass house I see. We don't call them gigashyte for no reason.

Their failure rate is high. Support is bad. The guy who has been waiting a year and a half+ for his replacement 2080ti comes to mind.

Gigabyte is garbage, their combo incentive to newegg are trash.

If the gpu shortage wasn't so bad there's no way in hell they could charge strix money for their cards.

 

[m3diapers]

I own a gigabyte B550I AORUS PRO AX motherboard and just cannot stop complaining. It's piece of crap. Oh, yeah I bought it from newegg!

 

[ypsylon]

Oh yes. Gigabyte low quality. 101% confirmed. My TRX40 Designare is quite a biatch. At first opportunity ditching this crap into recycling center and replacing with something useful. Circuitry is totally f*ed up.

 

[whateversa]

Good time to invest?

Probably yes. Gigabyte is a good brand.

 

[whateversa]

Oh yes. Gigabyte low quality. 101% confirmed. My TRX40 Designare is quite a biatch. At first opportunity ditching this crap into recycling center and replacing with something useful. Circuitry is totally f*ed up.

Usually hardware with a 3 year warranty is good quality stuff. Overclocking too high or using unsupported RAM? Or perhaps it needs a BIOS update or is faulty and needs to be returned?

 

[whateversa]

@Achaios

Strange, my experience with Gigabyte products has always been the complete opposite. I consider Gigabyte one of the most reliable and durable brands around. Never purchased a lemon from them and all products from GB I've owned lasted longer than their expected useful life (many still kicking). This goes not only from Gigabyte products I've purchased for personal use, but also for clients and companies I worked for in IT department. The fact that Gigabyte has been complaining about low quality of Chinese components shows to me that it's not a coincidence, they have a true commitment with quality and it only increased my trust in them as a customer.

MSI and Corsair, on the other hand, never again... got plenty of lemons from those, and also plenty of products that died in 8 weeks or less after the manufacturer's warranty expired.

I agree - Gigabyte is usually the longer lasting product.

 

[GamerNerves]

Gigabyte is not a company you would trust blindly. Sometimes they goal, but sometimes they sell subpar products like some budget motherboards. Gigabyte should design their stuff more carefully and focus on software. I'm willing to buy Gigabyte products, but the brand is not my number one favourite. Their claims are irrelevant, like said, basically any country can produce trash or quality.

 

[raybk]

Gigabyte told the truth about poor quality.
But this world is going crazy with China. Now, telling truth needs to apologize!

 

[fb020997]

I bought only two recent product from them, an X470 gaming something for a customer and a B350M Gaming 3 for my brother.
After 7 months, the main BIOS of the X470 went kaputt (the PC didn’t run) and it started only on the secondary one. Which never updated to the last version for unknown reasons. I sent it back to Amazon and got a refund, bought a Prime X470-Pro.
BIOS issues on the B350 one, also. A day it randomly booted to the first BIOS it had on it nearly 3 years ago, instead of the latest one flashed 2 weeks before. Note: it has only a single BIOS chip, not 2 like the X470.How is that possible I don’t know. I re-flashed it and it seems running fine…

 

[Bamda]

I have never had a CPU, GPU, HDD, SDD failed on me since 2000. I have owned 5 PSU at that time. My last big failure was a PSU in the early 2000s. I think it was a cheap brand but I can't say for sure as I don't recall the make or model. Since 2000 I have owned four MBs, all from Asus. My last three GPUs were from MSI, in the 2000s I only purchased only ATI GPUs. I have owned two Intels and two AMD CPUs. My HDD all have come from Seagate (9) and my SDDs (7) are a bit more varied. I own 4 Samsungs, one WD, one Crucial, and one Patriot. I take care of my devices and they seem to last for me.

 

[poohbear]

@Achaios

Strange, my experience with Gigabyte products has always been the complete opposite. I consider Gigabyte one of the most reliable and durable brands around. Never purchased a lemon from them and all products from GB I've owned lasted longer than their expected useful life (many still kicking). This goes not only from Gigabyte products I've purchased for personal use, but also for clients and companies I worked for in IT department. The fact that Gigabyte has been complaining about low quality of Chinese components shows to me that it's not a coincidence, they have a true commitment with quality and it only increased my trust in them as a customer.

MSI and Corsair, on the other hand, never again... got plenty of lemons from those, and also plenty of products that died in 8 weeks or less after the manufacturer's warranty expired.

I agree. All my motherboards have been Gigabyte since 2001, not one has failed me. All my GPUs have also been Gigabyte, never once had one die on me. It's a good quality brand.

Having lived in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China, the order of attention to detail and quality in the 21st century would be:

1.Japan (best quality & attention to detail)
2.South Korea (their quality improved dramatically in 21st century)
3.Taiwan
4.China


China is still a developing country. Just because the financial situation there has changed doesn't mean the culture has changed. They still look for the easiest low-cost option when creating things. They'll skimp on every detail at the detriment of the customer to save as much money as possible. Low quality = Chinese designed products.

I'm not talking about the manufacturing, as someone pointed out there are plenty of American designed products manufactured in China. I'm talking about products designed in China. They need another 20 years or so and a change in culture.(South Korea in the 20th century was associated with poor quality products, but Samsung led the charge in changing that entire culture.)

 

[koblongata]

U break china u pay

 

[GamerNerves]

I agree. All my motherboards have been Gigabyte since 2001, not one has failed me. All my GPUs have also been Gigabyte, never once had one die on me. It's a good quality brand.

Having lived in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China, the order of attention to detail and quality in the 21st century would be:

1.Japan (best quality & attention to detail)
2.South Korea (their quality improved dramatically in 21st century)
3.Taiwan
4.China


China is still a developing country. Just because the financial situation there has changed doesn't mean the culture has changed. They still look for the easiest low-cost option when creating things. They'll skimp on every detail at the detriment of the customer to save as much money as possible. Low quality = Chinese designed products.

I'm not talking about the manufacturing, as someone pointed out there are plenty of American designed products manufactured in China. I'm talking about products designed in China. They need another 20 years or so and a change in culture.(South Korea in the 20th century was associated with poor quality products, but Samsung led the charge in changing that entire culture.)

Interestingly you mention Samsung, whose products have been disappointing for me and for people I know rather often for various reasons. I think in your post, you rather talk about the perception of quality, because quality includes everything from durability to everything else. For example, Gigabyte might make motherboards that last, but do they have neat BIOS' or good customer service?
If I'd dare to bring up any country above others in general quality of products, then maybe Germany, but in general, in every country there are bad manufacturing processes and designs. The thing with China is, they offer cheap low quality production that other countries pay for, often willingly, which is foolish on both ends.

Well known example of quality products made in China are Xiaomi phones, just to mention one.