Motherboard and graphics card shipments are massively down

DigiTimes has reported that shipments for motherboards and graphics cards are down so significantly that they're likely to hit record-low levels by the end of this quarter.

You can guess why. It's all down to the Coronavirus, COVID-19, that evil virus, whatever you want to call it. The publication cited sources at various unnamed motherboard makers, explaining that production has been affected at every stage. At the start of the outbreak, factories in China and other neighbouring countries was immediately shut down, and now it's tough to get the shipments across the world due to spreading issues affecting the entire supply chain ecosystem. 

DigiTimes has suggested that demand in China is down 50 percent year-on-year with no hope of it picking up until July at the very earliest. 

Before Coronavirus hit, observers suggested that there'd be a seasonal increase in demand during Q3 2020 but suggestions of that have also been dampened down with the effects clearly likely to last for a long time to come. The report also suggests that AMD, Intel, and Nvidia are all expecting to not hit their target sales for this time period because, well, no one's buying. 

Laptop sales are also being hit with the world's top five laptop vendors seeing combined shipments drop almost 40 percent month-on-month in February due to lack of demand and shipment holdups. 

The only hope here for consumers is that such reduced demand could lead to price drops. So far, that seems plausible. AMD announced last week that there would be a price cut on its 3rd Generation Ryzen desktop processors with select Ryzen 3000-series desktop processors being cut by between $25 and $50. Expect similar deals to happen across the board if the crisis continues for much longer. 

While consumers understandably prioritise their health, well-being, and simply finding pasta in their local shop, the urge to upgrade is diminishing for a time. 

We're guessing that this may also be why Nvidia has postponed its Ampere announcements, because this is hardly a good time to build up hype for a new product.