During COMPUTEX 2019, in ASUS’ 30th Anniversary launch event, we sat down with ASUS Corporate Vice President and General Manager of Worldwide Sales for Open Platform Business Group, Jackie Hsu who gave us deeper insights into the company when designing and creating products.
Before becoming CVP, Jackie Hsu was President of ASUS Americas, responsible for sales operation in the North America, Central America and South America. Hsu was key in garnering a significant foothold in the US mainstream market, helping in strengthening product lines and expanding regional growth. Prior to his tenure for ASUS US, he was a 5-year veteran as President of Sales in China. Hsu is credited in one of the people that help made ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) one of leading brands in today’s market.
The interview was conducted together with Sharon Pan, Division Director of Product Marketing Div (Motherboard BU), James Lee, Deputy Division Director, Product Management Div (Display BU), and Dr. Albert Chang, General Manager (Motherboard & Server BU).
We’ve shared times with these people with friends from the media including Leo Bien Durana of TechPorn, Emmanuel Tortoza of Gadget Pilipinas and John Nieves of UnboxPH.
We would like to thank ASUS for their time and this opportunity.
Note: Text may be paraphrased for brevity and clarity.
BossMac Suba: You guys are the best, which makes every year to top yourselves. I want to talk about longevity of your products. What safeguards does ASUS put in the motherboard product to ensure longevity.
Sharon Pan: Its quality, and quality is a complicated element. It starts with materials. Then the vendors, how you validate them. Then how you design and how you assure quality. Finally, we have a huge number of teams. Some of them are covering compatibility test, some of them EMC test and many others cover signal assurance department. We can state that I think that the our investment in equipments is the biggest one amongst all the motherboard maker along with the teams involved, together we can ensure that no matter what, customs will get the best quality.
Let me share you a story. You know around the world we have repair centers and many of them actually don’t have business right now because our return rate is so low.
John Nieves: What your return rate, can you disclose?
Jackie Hsu: No. Sorry. [laughter]
John Nieves: What’s the industry standard?
Jackie Hsu: Low single digit. Because different companies have it different and different segment may have it different. But basically ASUS, in terms of price we’re the highest priced, so if our quality is not the best what customer would pay to come back to ASUS.
To echo what we have mentioned, I’ll give you two summaries: a) we do have one special thing: the so-called test report. Inside that test report, every single ASUS motherboard before we start mass-production, we do have test report in-house. Inside that test report, we cover more than 1000 different items in terms of reliability and compatibility. This job is very, very huge. And special. Why? I’ve been in this industry for 23 years. I joined ASUS in 1996. Since Day 1, I always show that test report to our customers. When they see it they say “Wow, this is 100 pages covering 1000 different items.” so when they ask other motherboard makers why ASUS has this test report and you don’t have it so they start to copy us. But they only make 5 pages, 10 pages, covering around 100 items. No more than 200. Why? Because that conserves a lot of effort and resources. Not only people, but also the investment for those equipment.
The other special thing is a special organization: the team that handle this test report. That team, don’t belong to R&D team. They are one independent team. Why? Because if R&D guy design a product but sometimes they may judge an issue and deem it as minor and let it go. They decide to ignore that issue and proceed with production. That’s why this special team and belongs to the Big Boss. So once an issue has been found, both of them with R&D team go to the Big Boss then explain if the issue belongs to the major issue or minor issue. All experts will then judge and once its deemed as major issue, they will not proceed.
Because of these special things and special effort, it makes ASUS different.
BossMac: Basically a lot of work. [laughter]
Dr. Albert Chang: Just to give you an example for memory test. We focus on memory compatibility. Every single motherboard will need to be tested at least 3 months in the internal lab for memory compatibility test. From DDR4-2400, 2666 and 2800 and 4000. It will take at least 3-4 months to finish all memory test but after that we have to fix all compatibility issues.
BossMac: With the majority of gamers, what can you put more in the table and make them keep coming back.
Jackie Hsu: Interesting question. First off all, we need to let them know we work with them. So from time to time we invest a lot of time and resources to communicate with those target customers, knowing their demand. So as long as we know what they need, based on our leading R&D resources and technology, we definitely can produce the product to meet their requirement. So no matter what, as long as their demand is reasonable, we can satisfy.
BossMac: Thank you!
We’d like to once again thank Jackie, Sharon, James and Dr. Chang for their time!
