Not Everyone Expects Windows 8 to Impact Notebook Demand That Much

Even without taking into account the release of Intel's Clover Trail CPU and the Acer, ASUS, Samsung, Dell and Fujitsu tablets running Windows 8, it is clear that IT players fully expect, or at least hope, for Windows 8 to shake things up, in a good way.

Even Advanced Micro Devices believes that Windows 8 will cause a period of chaos during which Intel's brand strength, or that of others, won't matter to consumers that much.

Most of that talk revolves around tablets though, not laptops, although brand vendors are very optimistic about notebook sales as well.

Not so for component suppliers though, reports say. While part manufacturers, those from Taiwan in particular, don't think there will be any sort of drop in sales, they don't foresee the opposite either.

Currently, they are watching the shipments closely. If next month, the month of October 2012, does not show a significant boost in orders, demand probably won't pick up in November or December either.

That would leave it to January 2013, and the fateful occasion known as CES (Consumer Electronics Show), to bring the demand improvement instead.

This projection was not made out of the blue, but after taking into account how first-tier PC brand vendors reduced their shipment forecasts for 2012. Only Apple continues to believe that its MacBook series will rise 20-30% on year (15-16 million).

For us, this doesn't really mean that much, except that not everyone is as ready to start jumping up and down because of Microsoft's new operating system.

It also reflects how the OS will have a larger impact on the tablet market, rather than the PC segment, which is strange for what used to be a PC-exclusive piece of software. There will be two main iterations: Windows 8 and Windows RT, both of which will power tablets but only one of which (the former) will power PCs.