Tuesday, July 11th 2023
Intel Discontinues its NUC Product Range
Intel has informed ecosystem partners about the cessation of direct investment in its Next Unit of Compute (NUC) business—ServeTheHome was the first outlet to report on this development earlier today, following industry rumors cropping up on Monday. Intel has been pulling back on non-core business operations—back in April its server building operation was sold to MiTAC. Today's announcement signals Team Blue's exit from the PC building industry—their (internally manufactured) NUC products included SFF computers, kits, laptop reference systems and boards.
Intel sent an official statement to HardwareLuxx (translated from German): "We have decided to stop direct investment in the Next Unit of Compute (NUC) Business and pivot our strategy to enable our ecosystem partners to continue NUC innovation and growth. This decision will not impact the remainder of Intel's Client Computing Group (CCG) or Network and Edge Computing (NEX) businesses. Furthermore, we are working with our partners and customers to ensure a smooth transition and fulfillment of all our current commitments."
Sources:
ServeTheHome, HardwareLuxx (German source)
Intel sent an official statement to HardwareLuxx (translated from German): "We have decided to stop direct investment in the Next Unit of Compute (NUC) Business and pivot our strategy to enable our ecosystem partners to continue NUC innovation and growth. This decision will not impact the remainder of Intel's Client Computing Group (CCG) or Network and Edge Computing (NEX) businesses. Furthermore, we are working with our partners and customers to ensure a smooth transition and fulfillment of all our current commitments."
44 Comments on Intel Discontinues its NUC Product Range
they are expensive though so I imagine they aren’t making a ton.
If Intel fixes it's manufacturing in the near future and also improves it's iGPUs we might see them resurrecting this line, because they will have something to sell.
Never used one but I like em.
I've been using several other brands for the past few years and love them....my current one is a 11th Gen model with 64GB ram and it easily powers right thru my huge database, image editing tasks, and enormously complicated spreadsheets like they were butter, all while splattered across 4 monitors....
They probably figured that since so many other brands were doing them too for a lot less (still built with intel CPU's, so not a total loss), they might as well devote their money towards other areas that will make them moar of it :)
Successful examples include Apple’s comeback with the iPod and AMD’s comeback as a fabless client of whatever fab has the best process.
If Intel is unwilling to pivot, a comeback may not be possible.
My second NUC which is about 3x as much grunt as much as my laptop, cost me about £180 net including components. This was back before the PC industry went crazy though. First NUC isnt great but was also dirt cheap only cost me £80 net.
I sometimes use it myself to let it chug away converting movies to H.265 at night. It's 15-25C cooler now and silent, was totally worth it.
Intel's intent was create a new market segment and show its usefulness, not to create an immensely profitable product. It had to be uncompetitive on price, so others had the opportunity to sell their versions a bit cheaper but still at a profit.
NUC's mission is now completed, it was actually completed a few years ago, so it's not a surprise they're getting discontinued.