Gold prices slip lower; consolidating after recent gains
Investing.com -- Intel’s mass production timeline for its Panther Lake (PTL) chip has been postponed from early September 2025 to mid-Q4 2025, according to a report by Ming-Chi-Kuo, an analyst at TF International Securities. This delay could potentially affect the availability of PTL notebooks until 2026, meaning that Intel may miss the crucial year-end holiday sales season in 2025. This could lead to downside risks for Intel’s revenue and profit in the second half of 2025.
Although Intel has only publicly stated that PTL is scheduled for mass production in 2H25, the decision to delay production could have been due to significant production issues. The delay could impact not only Intel’s revenue and profits in 2H25, but also organizational morale and supply chain trust.
Defect density is one factor that affects chip yield and mass production capability. The shipment schedules of PC/NB brands, ODMs, and EMS providers are critical indicators for assessing the production status of Intel’s 18A process. Intel’s advanced-node consumable shipments for 3Q25 show no major changes from current levels, which could support the delay of Intel PTL.
In the second half of 2025, Intel will primarily rely on Arrow Lake (ARL) to compete against AMD and Qualcomm. However, with ARL offering less than 40 TOPs and brands showing limited enthusiasm for Lunar Lake (LNL), Intel may be at a disadvantage in the 2H25 AI PC competition.
Some more aggressive brands have planned to adopt the limited Qualification Sample (QS) PTL chips expected in late September for specific high-end models to gain a time-to-market advantage. However, given the limited QS shipments, Intel will benefit minimally.
Until Intel successfully ships its own chips manufactured on the 18A, it will struggle to gain the trust of external IC design customers and secure their substantial resource investments for 18A chip development collaboration.
This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.