Weasel: date=March 2009

ASUSTeK Computer Incorporated (ASUS) ( ), a Taiwanese multinational company, produces motherboards, graphics cards, optical drives, PDAs, computer monitors, notebook computers, servers, networking products, mobile phones, computer cases, computer components, and computer cooling systems. Commonly called by its brand name ASUS (pronounced ah-SOOS ] and commonly mispronounced as AY-sus), it has listings on both the London Stock Exchange (lse: ASKD) and the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE: 2357). In 2007, one in three desktop PCs sold used an ASUS motherboard; and the company's 2007 revenues reached US$6.9 billion.

ASUS appears in BusinessWeek's "InfoTech 100" and "Asia's Top 10 IT Companies" rankings. It is the number one in quality and service according to Wall Street Journal Asia and leads the IT Hardware category of the 2008 Taiwan Top 10 Global Brands survey with a total brand value of US$1.324 billion.

ASUS also produces components for other manufacturers, including:

• Sony (PlayStation 2)Fact: date=May 2008
• Apple Inc. (iPod, iPod Shuffle, MacBook)
• Alienware
• Falcon Northwest
• Palm, Inc.
• HP

History

TH Tung, Ted Hsu, Wayne Hsieh, and MT Liao founded ASUS in 1989 in Taipei, Taiwan — all four founders worked as computer engineers for Acer. The name ASUS originated from Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology.Russian-language interview with Alexander Kim, October 2003 The first three letters of the word were dropped to give the resulting name a high position in alphabetical listings.

In 2005, shipments from ASUS, ECS, Gigabyte, and MSI totaled 104.86 million units . ASUS led with 52 million units, followed by ECS with 20 million, MSI with 18 million, and Gigabyte with 16.6 million.

Relationship with Intel

In the early 1990s, Taiwan-based motherboard manufacturers had not yet established their leading positions in the computer hardware business. Intel would supply any new processors to more established companies like IBM first, and the Taiwanese companies would have to wait for approximately six months after IBM received their engineering prototypes.

When Intel released its 486 as engineering samples, ASUS decided to design its own 486 motherboard without having a 486-processor engineering sample on site, using only the technical details published by Intel and the experience they gained while making the 386-compatible motherboards. When ASUS finalized its 486 motherboard prototype, they took it to Intel's base in Taiwan for testing. Unsurprisingly, they received no formal greeting when they arrived. It turned out that Intel's own 486 motherboard prototype had encountered design flaws, and Intel's engineers were rectifying it. The ASUS founders exercised their experience with the 486 and had a look at Intel's malfunctioning motherboard. Their solution worked, to the Intel engineers' surprise. Intel then tested the ASUS prototype, which functioned perfectly. This marked the beginning of an informal relationship between the two companies – ASUS now receives Intel engineering samples ahead of its competitors.