14 DAY TRIAL // It’s a well-known fact that “Skylake” K series will be the first of the “Skylake” to be launched this year at Gamescom in August. However, more will follow during the Q4 of 2015 until the first quarter of 2016.
However, the first notebook versions of the “Skylake” won’t be coming until October this year, meaning just a two-month delay for notebook applications to receive the new “Skylake.”
Eighteen notebook Skylake processors will be launched in the fourth quarter of 2015 to help boost notebook demand since vendors suffer from serious inventory issues with the recent unprecedented PC sales drop that’s affecting the notebook market as well. This being the calm before the storm with the world-wide IT market holding its breath until Windows 10 arrives this month and “Skylake” nearly a month later.
As we mentioned in a previous article, many retailers try radical measures to empty their existing Haswell and Windows 8.1 stocks to minimize the impact “Skylake” and Windows 10 will have when they arrive.
Low PC sales might hinder the launch of "Skylake"
Present PC sales are a major concern for all retailers both in Europe and Asia since China won’t buffer the stagnating hardware sales anymore as it did in the past when major Western markets suddenly shifted to mobile applications. A growing market for Apple, China seems to abandon the old model of PC acquisitions and starts to ship strongly to mobile applications as well, leaving PC vendors with very slowly digesting inventories affecting their plans for future products.
Coming together with the Z170 chipset, the “Skylake-K” will be followed closely by the “Skylake-U” series dedicated to replace the Broadwell-U for notebooks and laptop. Hewlett-Packad (HP) is currently ahead of others in preparation for the new “Skylake,” other notebook manufacturers now still work to make room for the new CPU from Intel.
DigiTimes believes that its sources are skeptical about the operating system’s ability to give a major boost to notebook demand as the market is tightly linked with PC sales that must grow first. Besides HP, Google might sell its Chromebooks with “Skylake” as well. Analysts believe PC sales should be back on a growth trend barely in the fourth quarter of 2016 when “Skylakes” should enter the market in force.