Asus acccused of squeezing out channel partners

AFTER THE INQ was unceremoniously booted off the Asus stand at Cebit, the firm's partners began complaining bitterly that the computer maker is doing its utmost to squeeze them out of the market

Asus is accused of hanging on to its new range of Atom and Neo mini-ITX mainboards, rather than shipping them on through the channel. It seems the Eee-maker would prefer to avoid competition from partner integrators in the netbook space.

One major UK system integrator (who we promised not to name) was knocked for six when its reps asked Asus about purchasing its next-generation mainboard technology, only to be told "Sorry, these boards will not be available to our customers. You can buy the machines from us already built, but the mainboards will not be for sale".

A source accused Asus of trying to, "choke the life out of the channel in order to survive the economic storm more or less in tact."

Asus is beavering away to bring a full range of laptops, desktops, settops, palmtops, stocking tops, netbooks, botox and MIDs to market by year's end. And in doing so it seems to be taking the job on local system builders out of the equation.

It certainly isn't the first time the Taiwanese firm has turned around and bitten its partners on the As-us.

A while ago the firm got a taste for the blood of its own UK channel when it pumped a load of stock into DSG electronics - bypassing many in the channel who had helped build the Asus brand.

We hear Gigabyte and MSI are sniffing about, picking up the pieces as Asus' partners get tossed out onto their, er, backsides. µ