MSI Computer Poised to Spin Off Consumer Business

MSI Computer is poised to spin off its consumer PC business as it seeks to expand the brand at retail, Andy Tung, vice president of sales, told us.

MSI, which builds notebook PCs for OEM customers such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard, began efforts to bolster its own brand three years and has gained distribution through Micro Center, Fry’s Electronics, CompUSA and Office Depot. The company has had to be careful to design its PCs differently from OEM customers’ to avoid conflicts, Tung said. MSI’s OEM and consumer PC business “right now are the same, but ideally we are going to spin out the consumer business,” said Tung, who declined to comment on the timing of the spinout. “It’s in process and just a matter of time when it will happen."

Under MSI’s current structure, the consumer group shares resources and “make compromises” in developing PCs to avoiding competing with OEM customers, Project Manager Joseph Shih said. Once it’s spun off, the consumer group can continue to source PCs from the OEM division but will have an option to use other suppliers as well, Shih said. The company launched its consumer business as a low-end supplier but added step-up models including gaming PCs and all-in-one desktop PCs to the computer line in 2010, Tung said. MSI added tablet PCs at CES this month.

MSI built its gaming PC on its history as a motherboard supplier. It is supplying motherboards for Intel’s new Sandy Bridge Core i5 and i7 processors. At CES it introduced the N460GTX Hawk triple overvoltage graphics card, designed to support adjustments for core, memory and PLL voltage, which can enable overclockers to exceed 1 GHz. Overclocking involves resetting a PC component to run faster than the manufacturer-specified speed to boost performance.

MSI introduced a G series of gaming notebook PCs that combined Intel’s second-generation Core i7 processor with a 3.3 GHz clock speed and USB 3.0 ports. The GT780 and GT680 ($1,499) feature 17.3- and 15.6-inch LCDs, DirectX 11-ready nVidia GeForce 500 and 400 series graphics processors along with Dynaaudio speakers. The GT780 is packaged with 500, 650 GB or 1 terabyte of storage, two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 connectors, HDMI, Nvidia’s GTX560 graphics processor with 1.5 GB memory and a 7,800-milliampere nine-cell battery with eight to nine hours’ run time.

In tablets, MSI introduced WindPad models in Android and Windows 7 versions featuring Arm and Intel processors. The WindPad 100A contains a 1.4 GHz Arm Cortex A8 processor and 1 GB RAM, WiFi and a GPS locator and G-Sensor gravity detection. The 100W ($499) uses an Intel Z530 Atom Menlow 1.66 GHz processor, 32GB solid-state drive and 2 GB of memory.