Intel sells more chipsets than CPUs

Motherboard makers overenthusiastic

Mar 19, 2010 by

INTEL IS SAID to be shipping 20 percent more chipsets than CPUs which makes for a fairly skewed ratio, as most users would upgrade their CPU, not their motherboard. In this case though it turns out that it’s the motherboard manufacturers that are hoping for better times and are placing large chipset orders with Intel.

These days it seems like everyone is pinning their hopes for a boost in sales on China and the motherboard makers are no different. China has already been promoted as the saviour of the desktop PC and now the motherboard makers are starting to prepare to be able to meet the expected demand. The report from Digitimes doesn’t go into any details as to which chipsets that are involved, so it’s difficult to draw any conclusions based solely on the increase in chipset demand.

All of the major motherboard makers are said to be ramping up production to be able to meet the expected demand, but the big question here is if it will happen to the degree that the motherboard makers are hoping. Intel is said to be a bit more conservative and if proven right, there might very well be a price war in the motherboard market later this year.

In related news, Digitimes is also reporting that sales of AMD based systems have accounted for over 40 percent of desktop sales in China. This has led all of the major motherboard manufacturers to increase their shipments of AMD boards to the market. AMD is said to have over 50 percent of the desktop market in China as of Q4 2009 which makes this a unique market, as AMD doesn’t have anything near this much market share in any other region.

Although desktops are cheaper than notebooks, the growth of desktop sales is likely to shift sooner or later to notebooks, just as it has in North America and Europe. Desktops are still much more powerful than notebooks, but we’ve gotten to a stage where notebooks can replace desktops for most users. Add the benefit of a smaller computer that takes up less space and uses less power and it’s not hard to see why many people chose to get a laptop over a desktop PC. Then again, 2010 is the year of the tablet, or is that the year of the iPad? Well, either way, we’re supposed to use these newfangled devices that get us on the net anywhere and that are set to somehow replace the traditional computer, if we’re to believe the manufacturers.S|A

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Lars-Göran Nilsson