Intel's new low-power-consumption Core M-series platform, featuring a fanless design, is expected to account for only 5-10% of most notebook vendors' shipments in 2015, and cooling fan makers are expected to see limited impact from the CPU platform in 2014-2015, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.

Notebook vendors including Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Dell, Acer, Asustek Computer and Toshiba all plan to roll out Core M-based models for the upcoming year-end holiday season, the sources indicated.

Since the performance of the Core M CPUs lags behind that of the Core i-family processors, most vendors are likely to continue to focus on Core i-based notebooks after launching their first wave of Core M models at the end of 2014, the sources asserted.

While stating that the Core M CPUs will have limited impact on their businesses initially, cooling fan makers have been strengthening their deployments in areas other than notebooks in order to cope with the rise of fanless CPU platforms, said the sources.

Cooling module maker Sunonwealth Electric Machine Industry (Sunon) has reduced the ratio of its notebook cooling products to 30% of its total sales, while ramping up the ratio for server, automobile, and energy-saving household appliance applications.

Additionally, Sunon has begun shipping its server cooling products to the supply chain of Project Scorpio, a server development project launched by Intel and China-based Internet service providers Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent in China.

PC cooling fan maker Adda has also lowered the ratio of notebook cooling fans to 50% of its total shipments and instead shifted focus to high-priced models for networking and industrial applications, the sources indicated.