Asrock is not at all any budget oriented part of Asus, they are completely separate company. When we went to Asus meetup this year, made this thing clear by asking it to the higher officials of Asus. And Asus is normally costlier than even some premium brands like MSI. does it mean MSI is a budget oriented company? Asrock has motherboard for all the ranges but not all of them are made available in India.
Basically, the situation between Asus and ASRock is like this (irrespective of statements from both companies' officials):
- ASRock brand was introduced in 2002 as a value brand of Asus for selling cheaper motherboards with lesser features but good value for money. ASRock motherboards were being produced at an Asus facility in China named Hua Ching.
- Later, Asus began diversifying. A plan was made to separate the manufacturing arm of Asus from the product design. Thus, Hua Ching became Pegatron, the manufacturing arm of Asus as well as ASRock.
- Wrangling between shareholders and planning led to separation of Pegatron from Asus some time in 2009/10 (wrangling theories unconfirmed). Asus still maintains a small stake in Pegatron, thus allowing Asus to use Pegatron for manufacturing motherboards and graphics cards.
- Meanwhile, during the separation, the ASRock brand and intellectual property went to Pegatron which promptly established ASRock as an independent brand. Realizing this turn of events, Asus began to aggressively introduce value priced motherboards (at the time, these were known as the X-series, e.g. K8V-X).
- Because many engineers who worked at ASRock also worked for Asus, between 2005 and 2006 a lot of Asus' X-series motherboards had similarities with ASRock designs (at this time the division of staff was taking place, etc.)
- Now, ASRock is completely independent from Asus, however Asus still (partly) owns its parent company. However this does not influence ASRock's operations, though in general ASRock tends to avoid direct conflicts in PR/marketing with Asus.
