It appears that both Asustek and MSI are being hit by the economy. Both companies have announced plans to lay off roughly 10% of their workers.

Asustek will be focusing their staff reduction on their handset, optical drive, and monitor departments. They expect about 460 staff to be afffected by the cuts. Asustek has stated that the layoffs are to shave excess workforce to lower costs.

MSI is set to lay off around 1,000 workers around the world, with 200 or so in Taiwan. While MSI says that layoffs are part of its regular process and that no large scale cuts are planned, you can't help but wonder how heavily the poor economy has affected this round of layoffs.

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