Intel has reportedly decided to delay the product launch of its i865-series chipsets due to requests of mainboard makers. Clients believed that their deliveries may be affected by the USA-Iraq war and asked Intel to postpone the announcement of Springdale chipsets in order to leave them more distribution time for the current line of products, as this Taiwanese web-site reported.

It said that i865-series of core-logic sets will be launched on the 20^th of May, instead of the 12^th of May, as scheduled originally. It will hardly affect time-to-market of Springdale products because the delay is caused by the concerns about the impact the war can have on the computer market in general, but not with difficulties with product development. As a result, mainboard makers hope to enjoy strong sales of their products starting from the late second quarter. Since summer months are not very favourable for computer hardware business, introduction of new products is likely to boost the sales.

Launch schedules of other products remained untouched.

Mainboard makers indicated that if the war in the Gulf ends quickly, the demand on computers in the Northern America market is likely to uptick; if the war lasts for long time, hi-tech business will be impacted in general. As for operations in the Middle East, mainboard manufacturers said that they all have been building up inventories in the region for the last couple of months, so, now these countries account for only a small part of operations.

To sum up, a lot of manufacturers of mainboards as well as other companies who deal with computer hardware are vary concerned about the USA-Iraq war. In case it drags on, the demand will tumble and hardware manufacturers will have to lower the prices in order to sell maintain the units’ shipments on the same level. Needless to say that it will be tough for them in terms of revenues and gross-margins, considering overall weak sales in the last 1.5-2 years.