Gigabyte Technology has scheduled to hold a product launch conference on June 10 introducing its new lines of products. Included are several recent favorite new ventures among board makers, such as notebooks, optical storage drives and mini-barebone systems, according to DigiTimes. Among the four companies, Asustek Computer and Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) have added notebooks into their product lines for several years, while Gigabyte returned to the market with its new Centrino-based notebook in March 2003. Micro-Star International (MSI) earlier stated at its shareholders meeting plans to launch own-brand notebooks by year-end with the cooperation of partner LG Electronics (LGE).

For the optical drive business, Asustek entered the market a few years ago with technology acquired through in-house R&D while MSI entered by partnering with Accesstek. Gigabyte paved its way into the market by establishing an alliance with optical drive manufacturer Asour Technology in March 2003. ECS has not yet announced plans to introduce optical drives.

Meanwhile, following ECS and MSI, which unveiled their respective “EZ-Buddie” and “Mega PC” mini-barebone systems in March, Gigabyte is expected to introduce a similar product in the upcoming launch.

Besides the new offerings, Gigabyte will also display its latest motherboards, graphics cards and LCD monitors.

In the past few years, motherboard makers have been diversifying into system businesses, hoping to boost their profit performance. However, given the current profit margin for notebooks and optical drives, board makers are in fact faced with competition as fierce as that in the motherboard market.