Tablets hurting Shuttle's desktop business

The rise of the tablet is making Shuttle's desktop sales suffer, it admitted today.

A Shuttle representative explained the reason behind its push into the business sector is more about the harm tablets and other mobile devices are doing to its traditional desktop strategy than just plain diversification.

It's been focusing much of its resources here at Computex towards generating more interest from the business sector rather than the consumer - looking at digital signage and point of sale equipment to try and take over the shortfall in its desktop sales.

Shuttle has been known for its small form factor desktop machines for many years now and was previously successful.

The rise and rise of the mATX and recently Mini ITX motherboard markets may well also have had some impact on Shuttle's rather niche sales strategy.

Looking at the likes of Zotac's soon to arrive, fully-featured Mini ITX Z68 board, and performance small form factor chassis from the likes of Silverstone you can see why.

It has been trying to get into the tablet game though, along with a great many manufacturers, though like ECS it is focusing its efforts on chasing OEM and ODM customers instead of creating its own brand.

Unsurprisingly Shuttle wouldn't name its currnet UK OEM partner, but having played with both company's OEM offerings today though I can see why it might not want its name being attached to the products that it has on display in Taipei.

Shuttle is steadfastly sticking to non-Windows operating systems, with Nvidia's Tegra (not Tegra 2) being the hardware of choice.

Unfortunately the chassis are inevitably generic and lacking in flair or personality and sadly the actual build quality and responsiveness is likewise short of other offerings.

So its decision to look towards the business sector may not be a bad move after all.