MSI Global

Micro-Star International (MSI™), which began production at its Kunshan, Jiangsu Province (China) plant in July, will hold an inauguration ceremony for the plant today.

The inauguration heralds MSI™'s official foray into a broader range of system products, such as notebooks and optical storage drives. Company chairman and president Joseph Hsu said in May that MSI™ planned to introduce own-brand notebooks at year-end. It is now estimated that MSI™-branded notebooks will hit the market in the first quarter of next year. It is still unclear what brand name the company will use. MSI™ will also seek OEM/ODM notebook orders.

The Kunshan plant occupies 750 acres of land and includes two factories and an R&D center. It has nine high-speed SMT lines and is expected to have at least 20 assembly lines by year-end, handling back-end manufacturing for PC end-products such as notebooks, barebones and optical storage drives. The Kunshan plant has been producing notebook motherboards for Dell through a joint venture between MSI™ subsidiary MSI™ Pacific International Holding Company and LG Electronics (LGE). It is estimated that one-fourth of the plant's capacity will be devoted to the joint venture, for output of an estimated 50,000-100,000 notebook motherboards per month.

(News Source From Digitimes.com)

MSI: Production bases
	Location	Capacity	Products	Note
Taiwan	Chungho, Taipei County	9 SMT lines (5 motherboard lines, 1 server line, 3 graphics card lines)	Motherboards, graphics cards, barebones, mini-barebones, Tablet PCs	SMT lines reduced from 22 to 9 in June 2003, due to production shift to Kunshan plant
China	Shenzhen (Baoan), Guangdong Province	23 SMT lines	Motherboards, barebones, server boards, optical storage drives	Entered second-stage expansion project in March 2003 to increase barebone system production capacity. Construction expected to be completed by year-end or early 2004.
China	Kunshan, Jiangsu Province	9 SMT lines, 20 AMT lines by year-end	Motherboards, barebones, server boards, notebook boards, optical storage drives, notebooks	Began volume production in July 2003, focuses on PC system production.

MSI™ to inaugurate Kunshan plant today