The president of Asustek, Jonney Shih, announced in 2007 his company intention to exempt the company from manufacturing parts for computers and focus on the design of integrated branded products. So on January 2, 2008 two new companies were created, Pegatron and Unihan. Pegatron undertook the manufacturing of components for the PC OEM (integrated device manufacturers) and Unihan undertook the manufacturing of components for non PC devices. Asustek, according to Chinese law, cannot hold shares in other Chinese companies for over 40% of the net value of the company. This created the “Pegatron Investment Holding Co., Ltd.” which will take over the equity of Asustek to Pegatron and provide 2,286,053,935 shares. Of those, Asustek will hold 25% and will distribute to its shareholders the remaining 75% proportion. This process is expected to be completed by July 1, 2010.

Asustek has already discontinued the manufacturing of motherboards and graphics cards in their own manufacturing plants for a year now, once Pegatron was established, but will stop completely the development, design and marketing to final consumers in 2010, so that Pegatron can compete with and devoted to the design of integrated computer solutions and entering into other electronic devices markets. The move to build proprietary solutions such as laptops will leave more profit for the company. Alongside Asustek plans is to built all in one desktop computers with touch screens such as the Apple model.

The close collaboration of Asustek with Intel is widely known, since they could take processor samples first before anyone else. So we see both Intel and Asustek to turn to specialized, embedded, all-in-one consumer electronics. Is this the end of an era for manufacturing of computers by end consumers and small construction companies? In ASUS place we have AShrock and Pegasus, while continuing to have motherboard manufacturers the large MSI and Gigabyte.