If you want to buy a computer soon, life is starting to get interesting. All is not well in hardwaredom.
Normally, mobo sales go up about 12% from September to October. This year, analysts expected just a 3% gain. They actually dropped 4%.
As the article put it, “The slide may also leave motherboard makers with oversupply . . . prompting a possible price war.”
There’s some indication that’s already beginning to happen.
Dell is supposed to announce its AMD notebooks on Thursday. No doubt they’ll be priced to compete or overcompete against HP’s Turion models; if the $299/$399 Athlon 3200/3800+ desktop models from Dell are any indicator.
For that matter, Dell’s been strengthening the discounts lately. For instance, lately Dell’s best discount on notebooks has been 20%. This week, the figure was 30%, and it was a real additional discount, not “we’ll raise the percentage and the price” kind of “discount.”
The “buy XP now, get Vista later” deals actually cost the OEM money, but most of the big OEMs are eating the cost of that.
Gateway has even introduced a model that’s overclocked. Not suggesting you buy one, but that seems to show at least some extra nervousness.
And, of course, in the U.S., Black Friday is coming.
This holiday season may end up being jollier than usual. 🙂
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