Entry level processors like Celerons from Intel and Semprons from AMD form a considerable chunk of processors sold, especially in countries like India. Since both companies plan to introduce newer processors in the lower-end range soon, and have stopped production of the last generation chips, there is a shortage of low-end processors in developing markets right now.
This has hit the motherboard manufacturers hard since the sale of motherboards are directly proportional to the sales of processors. The Motherboard bigwigs- Asus, ECS, Gigabyte and MSI have seen steady growth in volumes in the first three quarters of 2006 with an estimated growth of 12.2 to 18.5% in motherboard shipments, but early October saw a drop in sales primarily due to the shortage of CPUs.
Intel’s new low-end core 2 based CPUs are expected to hit the market some time in november.