Published in Transportation

Intel IGP chipsets see price hike

by on19 May 2008

Image

Because of Chinese earthquake

According to Digitimes, the price of several of Intel's entry-level chipsets with integrated graphics have seen a sharp price rise over the past week due to the earthquake in Sichuan, China last week. Intel's packaging and testing facility wasn't damaged by the earthquake, but transport in the area has been severly affected.

This means that Intel has put up prices on certain chipsets and the most worrying news is the price increase of US$3-4 for the 945GC chipset, which is part of the upcoming Atom nettop and netbook platforms. The problem is that a big price hike like this is likely to cause ripples all the way to end user pricing on Atom-based products and when you're considering that the margins are quite thin already, you can expect to see this cost and then some being forwarded to the consumers who purchase the products.

The G31 chipset has also increased in price, but slightly less at US$2-3, with the G33 following closly at US$3 more than a week ago. The price increase of these chipsets are unlikely to have the same kind of impact as the 945GC price increase, but it's possible that some entry-level PCs will see a small increase in price.

Digitimes claims that motherboard makers are expected to absorb the price increase, but we have a feeling this won't happen in the ultra-low-cost market, as the price increase is too high. If you consider that most of the motherboard makers are trying to do everything they can to save a single dollar, then this kind of last minute price change will have an effect on their product pricing.

More here
Last modified on 19 May 2008
Rate this item
(0 votes)