14 DAY TRIAL // Intel’s Skylake processors were originally expected to make an appearance into the wild in the third quarter of 2015, but as it often happens, chip manufacturers don’t really stick to what has been originally announced.
The Skylake series will debut as Intel’s next-gen CPU platform, following the existing Broadwell. But Broadwell processors have yet to become mainstream, as this is expected to happen in the first months of 2015.
Skylake gets postponed
Therefore, Intel has decided to postpone the launch of Skylake and the reason behind the move is pretty obvious – the company doesn’t want to hurt itself. If Skylake gets released, the life cycle of laptops running the current Broadwell platform will be significantly impacted.
Now Digi Times claims that this move will deeply affect the Windows 10 notebook market next year.
According to the report, Skylake might end up being available towards the end of the third quarter or the fourth quarter of 2015. This translates into Skylake making a debut somewhere between August and the end of October.
If things go according to the current schedule, Skylake-based notebooks are expected to hit retail locations towards the end of September (if we’re lucky).
It’s customary for the upstream supply chain to take somewhere between 4 to 5 weeks since the CPU launch, to actually roll out products taking advantage of the architecture.
The sources go on to say that Windows 10’s perspectives are already grim. For starters, enterprises are expected to finish their replacement cycles by the end of 2014 when Microsoft pulls the plug on Windows XP for good.
Furthermore, Microsoft will be offering free upgrades to Windows 8.1 for existing notebooks running Windows 8 or 8.1, and according to the Asian publication, Windows 10 brings less attractive features to the table.
Skylake's delay to impact the overall notebook market
All these aspects coupled together pain a pretty dark picture for the notebook market in 2015, as Intel’s Skylake delay will directly impact Windows 10 notebooks sales. Looking at the bigger picture, the overall laptop marker will experience sluggish performance in the second half of 2015.
On top of notebooks with Windows 10, the Skylake platform is also expected to go into tablets. A while back, a report surfaced online claiming the Android tablets equipped with the architecture would arrive on the market in 2015.
For all we know, they might be part of the Skylake lineup of products that will hopefully arrive in September, but this remains to be seen.