The dark satanic rumour is manufacturing hell on earth yarns claiming that the outfit could not make any money out of handsets for 11 years and it is time to pull the plug.

Gigabyte thought it was a wizard wheeze to make Windows Phone-based smartphones, which was not the best of choices. Android took off and passed Gigabyte by.  By the time it got into Android so was everyone else.

Gigabyte has also been pushing sales of its GSmart smartphones to markets in Eastern Europe, China as well as in Taiwan with annual shipments totalling about 300,000 units in 2014. This figure is of course too tiny to make any impact.

Gigabyte is going to shift its handset personnel to other developments.

It is not the only one which is feeling the pain. BenQ, which managed to make a re-entry into the Taiwan handset market in 2014, has also suspended the launch of new models recently.