Intel Chip Shortage May Delay New Laptops

Posted 04/27/2010 at 5:03am | by Paul Lilly

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A shortage of Intel's new Arrandale processors, including some Core i3 and Core i5 CPUs, appears to be getting worse, leading some vendors to delay the rollout of new laptops. According to chip distributors and industry researchers, part of the problem is that chip buyers bid the price of the microprocessors up by as much as a 20 percent premium over contract prices on the open market.

"It is unusual to find a device shortage that cannot be solved in the open market," says Converge, a U.S. chip distributor. "We also believe the Arrandale shortage must ease soon or it will have a prolonged effect."

Hewlett-Packard, Acer, and Asus all declined to comment, but according to Shane Rau, a research director at IDC, the shortage of Arrandale chips is mostly affecting smaller PC vendors. Large vendors typically get first priority when there are shortages, leaving smaller vendors to fend for themselves.

"We were slightly behind, quite frankly, satisfying all the demand our customers wanted on 32nm in the first quarter even though we were producing much more than we first thought," said Paul Otellini, Intel's CEO. "We expect to catch up to that demand in the second quarter on 32nm over the course of the quarter."

Image Credit: Intel via Legit Reviews