The ever popular Gigabyte motherboards, along with their video cards, will soon be put under a slightly different roof. Gigabyte United, the joint venture between Asustek and Gigabyte, will be assuming control of the motherboard and graphics card lines, to benefit from both companies experience:
Gigabyte United will have permanent and exclusive licensed use of the Gigabyte brand and trademark for making and marketing desktop motherboards and graphics cards. Gigabyte Technology will charge for the licensed use of its brand name for five years from the first year Gigabyte United begins to make a profit. Gigabyte United will pay 50% of its operating profit to Gigabyte for three years with the percentage to decrease to 33% for the following two years, according to Gigabyte Technology.
Gigabyte will still be responsible for already released products, but new products will come from the new company. Considering both Gigabyte and Asus have produced very quality boards in the past, and have been in direct competetion many times, it'll be interesting to see what a joint company will do. The merger, announced a few months ago, is expected to start operating in January.