It will not be unreasonable to suggest that the technology industry is waiting with abated breath for Intel’s Haswell platform that is set to make their debut this summer.
The chipmaker itself has hyped up the CPUs to almost outrageous levels.
Not only are the central processing units based on the Haswell projected to bring increased processing and visual performance, but Intel has heavily publicized the efficient power management of the platform, and the increased battery life it will bring to notebooks, ultrabooks and tablets.
And it can be said with reasonable conviction that the next-generation Surface Pro tablets will be powered by Intel Haswell CPUs — if anything, Microsoft’s slate is built for an efficient platform like this.
But for all the hype afforded to Haswell, the platform is speculated to not even account for a fifth of desktop sales. Even considering the fact that Sandy Bridge processors are set to be phased out by June this year, Haswell will not be able to carve a large enough market share for itself.
At least not as fast as many had hoped for.
Latest estimates suggest that only 19 percent of all CPUs sold for traditional computers will be based on the Haswell microarchitecture.
The biggest reason for this slow take off is, obviously, the fact that this new lineup of processors will only have half a year to make its mark. The other thing against it is the overall slump in desktop PC demand, which Haswell is not expected to boost, at all.
When you only bring around 10 to 15 percent improvements in core processing, this is foreseeable.
Add to this the fact that the entry-level Haswell chips (along with the H81 chipsets) will only arrive in the third quarter of the year, which will further cut into the selling time for Intel’s new platform.
So there you have it. Another gloomy forecast for the desktop front — an area where the Windows operating system reigns supreme — but here’s hoping Microsoft and other hardware vendors are prepared to balance this offset on the mobile arena with new devices.
