14 DAY TRIAL // The world sure likes to blame Microsoft for a lot of things. Lately, the company has been blamed for the low Windows RT tablet turnout, the weak sales on the laptop market, the decline of the PC industry as a whole, etc.
Now, Microsoft is being indirectly blamed for the high likelihood of notebook sales in the third quarter being weak.
Microsoft was supposed to launch Windows Blue, the Windows 8.1 operating system update, soon enough to be paired with PCs based on Intel Haswell CPUs.
Now, rumor has it that since Microsoft has decided to delay the launch until later this year (maybe even later than September 2013), this won't happen.
And with Haswell essentially being the main thing that can boost notebook demand in the second half of the year (although AMD's camp will have some notebooks out too) this means that Windows Blue was the only thing that could make a difference.
Without it, there won't be as much demand for notebooks during Q3 of 2013.