Compal sees tight supply of Intel CPUs until 2H 2019

Martin Wong, president and CEO of Compal Electronics, revealed that global shipments of laptops will be hit by the ongoing shortage of Intel CPUs. As we've written several times this month, Intel is struggling to meet demand as its 14nm production capacity is completely full. The culprit here is the massively delayed 10nm process, which results in too much of Intel's product mix now relying on the 14nm node.

So far, Intel hasn't provided its downstream partners a clear schedule on when the shortages can be resolved. Wong believes the tight supply is unlikely to be resolved before the second half of 2019.

Wistron originally expected its notebook shipments to grow 5-10% sequentially in the third quarter, but has already cut the forecast to 5% or less.

Inventec expects its third-quarter shipments to rise by a single-digit percentage sequentially and stay at the same level in the fourth quarter, while Quanta also expects a single-digit percentage sequential growth for the third quarter shipments, but was unable to give an estimate on its fourth-quarter performance.

Compal is a Taiwanese original design manufacturer (ODM), it's the world's second largest contract laptop maker. The company manufactures laptops for pretty much all major PC brands.

DigiTimes reports some market watchers are more optimistic, and expect the situation to improve in Q1 2019