"Microsoft's end of support for its Windows XP on April 8, 2014 has found successfully to boost commercial replacement demand, especially motherboards for commercial desktop PCs," said MIC analyst Evelyn Chang. Chang said that this is why the shipment share of barebone and full-system motherboard shipments inched up slightly in the first quarter of 2014 as their shipment decline rate was lower than pure motherboards.

Looking ahead to the second quarter of 2014, worldwide motherboard shipments are forecast to reach about 36 million units, down merely 1.9%. The arrival of en masse of processors developed by Intel and AMD to meet the demand at different price points is expected to cause waves, including Intel's Haswell Refresh and 9-series processors, AMD's Socket AM1 "Kabini" APUs (Accelerated Processing Units) and more "Kaveri" series APUs afterwards.

This development has weakened inventory pull-in momentum of brands during the transition period. Moreover, although the first batch of new processors such as Corei5 and Core i7 are to be shipped, their contribution to total motherboard and desktop PC shipments is estimated to be insignificant as they are mainly used for high-end desktop PCs.

Figure I: Worldwide Motherboard Shipment Volume, 1Q 2012 - 3Q 2014 (Source: MIC)