What They Say
Tom’s Hardware reported that the Ukranian Vice President, Mykhailo Fedorov, made an appeal on Twitter to Asus to stop selling products to Russia. The blog reports that the Taiwan News had said that Asus, Acer and Gigabyte were ‘reviewing the evolving situation’. That paper reported that MSI had not publicly made a statement, but has ‘quietly followed’ the lead of other companies in stopping sales in Russia.
The request has been backed up by a call from a Taiwanese cabinet advisor to follow the request.
(Just as I went to publish this article, I saw that Asus had said that its shipments are at an ‘effective standstill’. It has also donated $1 million to the Taiwanese relief agency which is in charge of humanitarian donations for Ukraine).
What We Think
It’s slightly surprising to me to see Taiwanese firms so reluctant to take part in the economic battle against Russia. I would have thought that helping to show that an invasion like this would see huge economic damage to the aggressor would be in the long term interest of the firms.
The late comment on Reuters that shipments had stopped does suggest that the shipments had stopped for practical reasons rather than being a matter of policy for Asus. In 2020, IDC reported that Asus had 14% of the market, and the data below, from Canalys, showed that this had dropped to 9% by last year. (BR)
