The story
Early history
ABIT was founded in 1989. In 1991, the company had become the fastest growing motherboard manufacturer, claiming US$10 million in sales.
In 2000, ABIT underwent an initial public offering (IPO) on the TAIEX stock exchange. To keep pace with their "good" sales figures, they opened a factory in Suzhou, China, and moved to new headquarters in Neihu, Taipei. The number of motherboards sold was claimed to have doubled between 2000 and 2001.
Abit chose to outsource two low-end boards for trial production from June 2002 to Elitegroup Computer Systems. Confirmation of the outsourcing move was made public in July 2002, accounting for 10% of Abit's motherboard shipments for the first model, and by August 2002, this would increase to 15-20% for the second model, for the company's niche products, such as servers and routers, Abit's factory in Taoyuan, Taiwan factory will then serve as their base.
Abit had somewhat of a blow in March 2003, when Oskar Wu, a leading engineer on the famous ABIT NF7-S motherboard, resigned after the NForce series to become head of the LANParty range at competitor DFI.
Investigation and financial problems
On 15 December 2004, the Taiwan Stock Exchange downgraded ABIT's stock due to questionable accounting practices. Investigations revealed that the majority of their import/export business was conducted through seven companies, all located at the same address and each of which had a capital of only HK$2. This made it easy to inflate the reported number of motherboards sold. The Hong Kong media also reported that the management was being investigated for embezzling funds from the company.
In June 2005, ABIT partnered with Wan Hai Industries. This container shipping company, also a principal investor in China Airlines, brought the company much needed capital, since the company had financial problems at this time, partly due to a class action lawsuit involving faulty capacitors on their products, but also because of marketing highly technical products to the general public while offering longer-than-average warranties and generous return policies.
Acquisition by USI and demise
On 25 January 2006, ABIT announced that USI intended to purchase ABIT Computer's motherboard business and brand and announced a special shareholders' meeting to discuss the sale of ABIT's Neihu building, changing ABIT's company name, the disposition of the company's assets, and the release of the directors from non-competition restrictions. ABIT sold its own office building in Taipei to Deutsche Bank in order to raise money to cut its debt.
Following USI's acquisition of the motherboard business, the remaining divisions of ABIT switched to distributing components and networking products, while using its Suzhou, China plant only to offer some motherboard contract manufacturing services.
Read the full text
The acquired motherboard business and the 'ABIT' brand name were used by USI under the new brand name Universal Abit. In the US, it was known as Universal Abit USA Corporation. The old company, ABIT Computer Corporation (USA), is now dissolved and is no longer in existence.
Universal Abit later announced that it would close on 31 December 2008, and officially cease to exist on 1 January 2009.
By 2009, Abit no longer sold motherboards.
Universal Abit was located in Neihu, Taiwan with regional offices in China, USA, Iran and the Netherlands.
From Wikipedia’s article on Universal Abit, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4