If you’re planning on buying an Intel CPU, it might be advisable to make the purchase sooner rather than later. CPUs and peripheral chips are about to get more expensive.
A new report by Nikkei claims Chipmaker Intel is planning to raise the prices of CPU prices this year.
Nikkei mentioned the CPUs for servers and computers, where Intel dominates the market, as well as on a wide range of other items, including chips for Wi-Fi and other connectivity, will be affected by the increase.
Three industry executives with direct knowledge alleged the root cause of the rising chip production costs are the surging costs of electricity, raw materials, transportation, and labour.
The Chipmaker informed the public earlier this year that it was looking at price increases for certain chips, due to ongoing inflation and the rising costs of materials, shipping, and labour.
The report didn’t state the exact price increase but noted that some chips could go up by 20%. One of the industry executives said that this could be different for different types of chips, but are likely to range from a minimal single-digit increase to more than 10% and 20% in some cases.
Intel produces the majority of CPUs for client PCs, embedded systems, and servers. In addition, the company is a leading supplier of Wi-Fi, Ethernet (both for client systems and datacenters), FPGAs, and many other products.
A major price hike by Intel will inevitably affect the whole industry given the wide range of products its supplies to thousands of its customers worldwide.
What remains to be seen is whether other industry leaders will also raise their prices following Intel and citing similar reasons.
Companies like AMD, Nvidia, Xilinx (now part of AMD), Marvell, Realtek, Phison, Silicon Motion, and many others serve the same or adjacent market segments and experience the same problems as Intel.
So, if the Tech giant increases its prices, its rivals may choose to maintain theirs, sell more and grab some market share from Intel; or increase their pricing without any fear of losing market share to the blue chipmaker.
