Ming-Chi Kuo released his latest industry survey and pointed out that Intel’s Panther Lake (PTL) mass production time has been postponed from early September 2025 to mid-4Q25. The shipping time between chips and finished products (PC/NB) is about 2 to 4 weeks, so PTLNB may not become popular until 2026, which means that Intel (INTC.US) will miss the year-end sales season in 2025, and 2H25 revenue and profits will face downward risks.
Ming-Chi Kuo pointed out that although Intel has announced that PTL is expected to be mass-produced in 2H25, so the delay is still within its announced expectations, but it would not have made this decision if it had not encountered serious problems on the production side. Because the PTL delay is detrimental to Intel's 2H25 revenue and profits, as well as the most important organizational morale and supply chain trust.
According to Ming-Chi Kuo's survey of Intel's advanced process consumables shipments, there is no significant change in shipments in 3Q25 compared with the current situation, verifying the possibility of Intel's PTL extension. In 2H25, Intel will mainly rely on Arrow Lake (ARL) to face competition from AMD and Qualcomm. Because the ARL is lower than 40TOPs and the brand is not willing to promote Lunar Lake (LNL), it means that Intel is at a disadvantage in the 2H25 AIPC competition.
Ming-Chi Kuo said that more active brand owners have planned to use PTLQS (Qualification sample), which is expected to be produced in small quantities at the end of September, on specific high-end models to strive for priority in the market. However, because the number of QS is limited, it will not be of much help to Intel. Before Intel's own chips produced using the 18A process were successfully shipped, it was difficult to gain the trust of external IC design customers and actually invest a lot of resources in cooperating with Intel to develop 18A chips.