Not like other Taiwanese companies?
A designer hard at work, scrutinising the PCB layout of a forthcoming XPC system's mainboard. Shuttle has close ties with both Intel and AMD, such that chipsets launched to coincide with the release of new processors are amalgamated into XPC mainboard form and released in an updated Shuttle. Of course, the company's previous experience at producing regular ATX-sized motherboards holds it in good stead for the XPC line.
Keeping track of all the changes to XPCs is no mean task, so Shuttle holds detailed FAE reports on every XPC chassis/mainboard it has ever produced. The photograph above only highlights one portion of the data kept by Shuttle; there's an entire room, just off to the left, devoted to all things XPC.
The building serves as a one-stop engineering facility, as well. On the same floor is an anechoic chamber where detailed sound measurements are taken and analysed, to keep the XPC line as quiet as possible. Once a design has been passed over to manufacturing, mass-produced construction takes place in China; the same approach used by 99% of Taiwanese manufacturers. It's simply too expensive to have all XPCs manufacturerd in Taiwan.
Shuttle asserts that its XPC barebone line, whilst wildly popular and profitable, doesn't have a whole lot of innovation left. That's why it has branched out into retailing its own range of pre-configured systems and, probably more importantly for long-term survival, diversified into related products. One such product is the X100HA small form-factor PC, which we took a look at here.
What came across from talking to some of Shuttle's VPs is the un-Taiwanese-like thinking the company has. It's not scared to try new products by throwing them directly into the market. Some don't succeed even though they're technically excellent, such as the SD11G5 XPC, but Shuttle knows that innovation is the key to survival.
Practically anyone, it says, can produce a reference motherboard or XPC clone, but Shuttle is not interested in towing the homogeneous line that Taiwanese companies are famous for. Rather, the company sees itself as the Apple of Taiwan, that is, different from the norm, innovative and technically pushing the envelope of what's possible with small form-factor systems.
Shuttle's design and marketing approach, with aesthetics and perception just as important as per-unit price, may seem like common sense to the western reader who appreciates that the pure-volume approach of building motherboards or graphics cards based primarily on price is a recipe for disaster for all but the very big (Foxconn, ASUS, et al).
But try conveying that to a multitude of Taiwanese companies and the accounts department will shut a project like X100HA down before it's left the drawing board. Here's where Shuttle's relatively modest size and focus on being a European-style company is manifestly a bonus. The accounting department actually listens to the creative folks before binning projects, and senior VPs are more interested in how to make the newest XPC 'cooler' than in working out how to save a few cents by using inferior buttons. In the world of build it as cheap as you can, Shuttle kind of sticks out like a sore thumb, and I like it.
The proof of Shuttle's creative thinking and lifestyle focus is reinforced by its decision to have a dedicated company store in a plush Taipei shopping centre. Does that remind you of any other company? There are plans to launch a London-based store, too.
Bookended by two of HEXUS' finest are a couple of folks instrumental in changing Shuttle business from a generic motherboard manufacturer to purveyor of high-quality XPCs and small form-factor systems. Ken Huang, (second from left) Shuttle's VP of marketing and the inimitable Stan Cheng (second from right) Vice President of R+D, are two men whose creative vision wasn't stifled by the bean counters, and hooray for that.
Visiting Shuttle after taking in a number of other Taiwanese companies was like a breath of fresh air. It knows it cannot compete against the volume producers so it doesn't try to. Its differentiating factor, and therefore competitive advantage, lies in producing solutions to problems (quietness, space, portability, etc.) rather than, like others, building a SKU that it thinks the market will just accept.
There's a whole heap of innovation coming out of Shuttle in 2007 and we'll keep you posted on it.
