Gigabyte

A website introduction by Taiwan island-based computer hardware manufacturer Gigabyte, mocking the quality of Chinese mainland-made products, drew criticism of mainland netizens on Sina Weibo on Tuesday. 

And, on e-commerce platforms JD.com and Suning, the search result of Gigabyte products is unavailable on Tuesday afternoon. 

The introduction about the Gigabyte's e-sports laptop series "Aero" claimed that Gigabyte implements strict quality control and manufactures their laptops in the Taiwan island instead of the Chinese mainland, where product quality is low, said the introduction. 

"It was quite obvious that Gigabyte placed a wrong statement on the company's simplified Chinese character website," said Sina Weibo user called "Zilv Yiji". Most netizens expressed anger online, saying that for the company mocking mainland products quality is "unacceptable".

Official Weibo account of Gigabyte e-sports later posted an apology on Tuesday, saying its statement was false, and was caused by the mistake of inter-management. Gigabyte stated that the company had opened up business in the Chinese mainland for over two decades and more than 90 percent of its PC and related hardware capacity was located in Chinese mainland. 

Gigabyte's official website showed that the company set manufacturing bases in Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang Province, and Dongguang, South China's Guangdong Province. 

"Gigabyte, Micro-Star International (MSI) and ASUS are called the 'big three' in PC hardware market and Gigabyte can indeed provide top-level PC graphic cards and motherboards," Gao Tiancheng, a PC DIY fan in Xi'an, Northwest China's Shannxi Province, told Global Times on Tuesday. 

However, Gao noted that the laptops produced by Gigabyte has a shrinking market share in Chinese mainland now. According to Chinese market consultant site Intelligence Research Group, laptop brands including HP, Lenovo, Dell, Apple, ASUS and Acer together make up 89 percent of global laptop market share.