ASUS was founded in 1989 by four computer engineers who worked for Acer. In the early 1990s, the company formed a profitable relationship that would inevitably help it to achieve global success. At the time, Taiwan manufacturers were not the motherboard leaders in the computer hardware market they have become today. Intel was stomped after finding that its 486 motherboard did not function as intended. To their surprise, ASUS had designed a 486 prototype, one they took to Intel’s Taiwan lab for testing. Intel found that the ASUS motherboard worked perfectly, a discovery that lead to an informal partnership between the two entities. ASUS has since become a major supporter of Intel’s Common Building Block initiatives and has the luxury to obtain Intel engineering samples before the competition.
ASUS has garnered much recognition during its tenor in the computer hardware business. In 2007, the manufacturer was recognized by Oekom Research as a “Highly environmental-friendly company” in the computers and peripherals market. In addition, ASUS was honored with numerous EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) Gold Awards for its product line of N-Series notebooks. The company has a regular spot in Asia Top 10 IT Companies and Business InfoTech 100 rankings. Boasting an estimated $1.324 billion in total brand value as of 2008, ASUS is showing no signs of slowing down soon.