The tech industry’s breakneck pace of introducing new processors may be better for you than you thought. One analyst suspects that laptop retailers may be more interested in selling out older notebook stock than usual — to make space for the exciting new models.
AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm are rushing out new processors: AMD recently launched the Ryzen AI 300 notebook processor, Intel is pushing ahead to Lunar Lake in September, and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chips are driving forward the new class of Copilot+ laptops.
Related: What are Copilot+ PCs? Explained
With all this cool stuff coming out, why dwell on the past? Retailers only have enough shelf space and marketing dollars to promote a finite number of products, and they’re probably going to focus on the latest and greatest for maximum bottom-line impact. Everything else needs to be moved out as quickly as possible — and that means sales.
On Thursday, Mercury Research analyst Dean McCarron released his estimates of how AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, and other vendors fared during the second quarter of 2024. While the numbers are tangentially interesting, the overall picture is still the same: Intel holds roughly 80 percent of the market, AMD controls the other 20 percent. The more interesting observation was about the rate of change in the PC landscape, and specifically the mobile market.
“In general it appears that older [mobile] products were declining rapidly as new CPUs replaced them, and it looks likely that the end PC market will see a rapid product transition in the second half to parts like Meteor Lake, Lunar Lake, Hawk Point, and Strix Point as large amounts of channel inventory appear to be getting cleared out in the second and third quarter to make way for them,” McCarron wrote, referring to the code names of Intel’s Core and AMD’s Ryzen processors.
McCarron also said that sales of entry-level and older Intel Celeron processors, including the Intel Celeron N100 and N200, had slipped. In earlier quarters, they had shown strong growth. All of those chips are sold into Chromebooks and low-end laptops.
In other words, retailers are actively trying to unload older laptops and demand has slowed for some budget Chromebooks. In almost every case, that means sales are coming.
What this means is that you should bookmark our daily roundup of the best laptop deals, which is refreshed every morning with the latest new deals worth pouncing on. You can also keep an eye on the best current laptops and best current Chromebooks for specific deals.
Back-to-school deals may be bigger than ever this year, and I absolutely think that this year’s Black Friday laptop sales are going to be incredible. Buckle up! It’s going to be a fun ride.
Further reading: Buying a laptop? Don’t go below these min specs
Author: Mark Hachman, Senior Editor, PCWorld
Mark has written for PCWorld for the last decade, with 30 years of experience covering technology. He has authored over 3,500 articles for PCWorld alone, covering PC microprocessors, peripherals, and Microsoft Windows, among other topics. Mark has written for publications including PC Magazine, Byte, eWEEK, Popular Science and Electronic Buyers' News, where he shared a Jesse H. Neal Award for breaking news. He recently handed over a collection of several dozen Thunderbolt docks and USB-C hubs because his office simply has no more room.