According to a report over at Digitimes.com, Intel has released CPUs intended for OEMs in the retail channel, making quite a disorder in the market, all due to the fact that PC vendors orders of Haswell CPUs has fallen short of original expectations. These OEM parts have US $20 to $30 lower price when compared to one meant for retail/e-tail.
PC vendors did not see a rise in demand in the third quarter and while they are still stuck with high Ivy Bridge inventories it is now wonder that most of them decided to play it safe with Haswell. In order to prevent current CPU inventories from impacting its second wave of CPU shipments planed for July and August, Intel decided to dump stock in retail channels worldwide, which caused significant damage to channel distributors.
Digitimes.com sources noted that this move from Intel is its last resort as PC vendors have mostly turned the company's requests. Some market watchers also noted that Intel might also cut back its production capacity in order to stop the problems.
Source:
Digitimes.com.