Intel Thunderbolt suffers low penetration in the PC market

Intel Thunderbolt suffers low penetration in the PC market

Monica Chen, Taipei; Joseph Tsai, DIGITIMES [Wednesday 14 November 2012]

Intel's Thunderbolt technology is facing difficulty penetrating the PC market. Currently only about 10% of notebooks and motherboards adopt the technology due to high costs, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.

Since the PC industry is expected to remain in a downturn in 2013 and Thunderbolt is not a necessary feature for PCs, the technology's penetration rate may have trouble rising further, causing demand for related accessories to also be impacted.

Currently, the controller chip for Thunderbolt technology costs about US$20, a lot higher than the US$0.50-0.80 for USB 3.0 controller chips; therefore, most first-tier notebook and motherboard vendors only adopt the technology in their high-end flagship products.

Since consumers also do not yet have much demand for Thunderbolt-related products and the supply chain for the technology is not yet formed, most accessory and PC vendors are conservative about designing products using the technology.

Currently, Thunderbolt is mainly used by Apple's products and the technology is unlikely to have a chance to standardize until 2014 when costs will drop to an acceptable level.

There are currently two Thunderbolt controller chip makers in the market – ASMedia Technology, a subsidiary of Asustek Computer, and Marvell; however, the two have not yet seen any significant revenue contributions from the product line.

Thunderbolt sees weak penetration rate in the PC market
Photo: Michael Lee, Digitimes file photo