Asrocks strength in my opinion was always two-fold. For one they engineered (and build) very versatile boards which helped in migrating from one technical step to the next, albeit giving the user a chance to keep parts of the existing technology (DDR vs DDR2, APG vs PCI-E, Socket 939 vs Socket AM2 and so on).
This is a real niche market, but obviously a profitable one!
The second strength was their ability to build and sell mainboads for (very often) half of the price of the premium brands - but 90-95% of their quality!
This, together with the first point, made them looking extremely interesing for all "cost conscience" users....
If they *really* move into the high/mid-end market they will compete with Gigabyte, ASUS and MSI. Sorry folks, no way. If I'm willing to spend over a 100 or 150 euros for a mainboards I would hesitate to recommend Asrock. I think an the long run they cannot compete with the "big guys" in the market...
And in the meantime teh market where they originated and had their greatest success will be occupied by Jetway and other low cost vendors....
I'm glad I haven't to decide about Asrock's business development :-)
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