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. 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. == Technical achievements ==