Friday, November 16th 2018
Intel Cutting Retail Processor Supply for Holiday 2018
Prices of retail packages of Intel Core desktop processors could continue to rise over Q4-2018, as the company has reportedly cut their supply, in favor of tray/reel shipments to OEMs. This could mean DIY favorites such as the Core i5-8400, the i5-8600K, i5-9600K, or even Core i7 models such as the i7-8700K, i7-9700K, and the flagship i9-9900K could be severely in short supply, or heavily marked up wherever available. Intel recently devised a strategy to increase its Core processor volumes by pumping in an additional $1 billion to its usually-$15 billion capital expenditure, to fire up small-scale manufacturing facilities around the world, to augment its bigger fabs located in Malaysia and Vietnam.
Sites like Mexico, Israel, and Ireland are beneficiaries of this move, and are being expanded. Much of Intel's efforts appear to be focused on making sure notebook and pre-built PC manufacturers aren't starved of processor inventory. The DIY retail channel, which consists of boxed processors, will foot the bill for this move. A good example of understocked retail channel would be the $499 Core i9-9900K processor being sold for upwards of $900 in some online stores. AMD is in an enviable position to fill the void, comments PCGamesN. Prices of its Ryzen desktop processor PIBs are either flat, or marginally cut; and socket AM4 motherboards are generally cheaper than LGA1151 ones.
Sources:
PCGamesN, DigiTimes
Sites like Mexico, Israel, and Ireland are beneficiaries of this move, and are being expanded. Much of Intel's efforts appear to be focused on making sure notebook and pre-built PC manufacturers aren't starved of processor inventory. The DIY retail channel, which consists of boxed processors, will foot the bill for this move. A good example of understocked retail channel would be the $499 Core i9-9900K processor being sold for upwards of $900 in some online stores. AMD is in an enviable position to fill the void, comments PCGamesN. Prices of its Ryzen desktop processor PIBs are either flat, or marginally cut; and socket AM4 motherboards are generally cheaper than LGA1151 ones.
106 Comments on Intel Cutting Retail Processor Supply for Holiday 2018
Intel could easily lose another 10-15% of CPU market share over the next two years because of their self entitled arrogance.
...If only we could see the same happen to Nvidia in the GPU market.
We could conspire in "why?" for all we want, but that's just a matter of fact.
It seems like they are purposefully making space for the market's competition, to increase the value and legitimacy of investing in the Desktop CPU space.
No Hyperthreading and still a big fat premium price.
I'm personally done with Intel, which i been using since 2008. My Next upgrade will be AMD Zen2.
This, if true, is really quite poor from Intel, in terms of how they are treating the consumer DIY market. But, it'll please the shareholders.
Capitalism at its finest. Starve the populace to increase profit.
Supply is constrained because Intel literally cannot produce enough CPUs to satisfy demand for servers (higher margins) and requirements by OEMs (contracts written in blood), while also having enough for consumers. So something has got to give, and that is the consumer supply. Do you honestly think this is something they'd do willingly, considering the most lucrative sales periods of the year (Black Friday and Christmas/New Year) are coming up?
AMD stands to benefit massively from this. I know their CPUs are cheap already, but they should go for the jugular by discounting them even further. This is a golden, maybe never-to-be-repeated opportunity for them to grab a decent chunk of marketshare and keep the Zen velocity going.Wrong.
Christmas sales aren't bad either...
seems like more bad management and lack of proper ramp-up planning to me :(
Me thinks AMD will be getting really, really, stinkin, filthy friggin rich in the next 90 days.......Unless they have Fab/supply issues too (does not seem like it atm)......
This is exactly what Intel is doing, trying to move production of chipset, lower end Pentiums (some?) & Atom to TSMC. I'm also pretty sure they're making less Pentiums, Celerons, i3, i5(?) wrt to the higher end i7, i9 than we've seen previously.
If you're pointing fingers at Samsung, Hynix, Micron for proposing to limit supply then not doing the same for Intel is hypocritical to say the least!
trog
But still it's safe to say they are selling products with larger margins to a good degree, AMD can't go scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of pricing because they simply don't have to, their products offer massively better value at every price point already. I've bought my 8-core 1700X for 240$, when do you think Intel will get even close to that ? They simply wont, they run with a different business model in mind, any deviation from that will be a long term endeavor, AMD is safe with their current pricing.
trog
i assume that the fact that intel cant make enough product isnt intentional..
trog
ps.. there is one other basic rule.. if this situation continues AMD prices will also have to go up..:)