Intel Core M to account for fewer than 10% of 2015 laptop shipments

Sources in the upstream supply chain told DigiTimes that Intel's new Core M platform, which utilizes a fanless design, will not take the market by storm. The sources estimate sales of Core M laptops will account for only 5 to 10 percent of global laptop shipments in 2015. Laptop cooling manufacturers are taking precautions by increasingly focusing on cooling products for other product types including servers, automobiles and industrial applications.

Notebook vendors including Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Dell, Acer, Asustek Computer and Toshiba all plan to roll out Core M-based models for the upcoming year-end holiday season, the sources indicated.

Since the performance of the Core M CPUs lags behind that of the Core i-family processors, most vendors are likely to continue to focus on Core i-based notebooks after launching their first wave of Core M models at the end of 2014, the sources asserted.

While stating that the Core M CPUs will have limited impact on their businesses initially, cooling fan makers have been strengthening their deployments in areas other than notebooks in order to cope with the rise of fanless CPU platforms, said the sources.