It's no secret that Coronavirus is affecting the tech industry (opens in new tab). According to a DigiTimes (opens in new tab) report Tuesday, that also includes China's PC building (opens in new tab) industry, namely motherboards and graphics cards (opens in new tab), which are reportedly already seeing a drop in local demand.
The report cites unnamed "sources from the upstream supply chain" and says that vendors like Asus and Gigabyte, which see most of its GPU and mobo products sent to China, may see shipments drop further than originally expected in Q1. Gigabyte is said to have shipped fewer than 10 million motherboards in 2019.
The "significantly" lower demand reportedly stems from local consumers avoiding public places, including cafés and physical stores. Meanwhile, many local services in China, such as delivery services, have been suspended, meaning that online shopping for hardware will also come to a slowdown. And while Chinese residents have other things to worry about besides updating their rig, we suspect that demand won't come to a complete halt. After all, those stuck at home may be itching for a more powerful entertainment system.
DigiTimes also claimed that this decrease in PC hardware demand has "greatly eased" pressure on Intel regarding its CPU shortage. It added that this could reduce AMD's opportunity for market penetration (opens in new tab). But keep in mind, there was more driving consumers to AMD products besides Intel's shortage, including lower price points.
DRAMeXchange, on the other hand, recently said that it doesn't expect the Coronavirus to affect memory supplies (opens in new tab), despite the closure of many factories.