Despite weak overall demand for PC, sales of gaming notebooks, inexpensive desktops and mini PCs remain strong, especially models using Intel's Pentium and Celeron processors, which continue enjoying strong demand in Europe, North America and Southeast Asia. Seeing the trend, Intel is scheduled to mass produce its next-generation Apollo Lake-based processors in June-August 2016 with related entry-level PC products becoming available in the market in October 2016, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.

Inexpensive PCs and mini PCs using Intel's Core i3, Pentium or Celeron processors are currently priced between NT$8,000-20,000 and are seeing strong popularity in Southeast Asia and Latin America.

Currently, over 500 million existing PCs worldwide have already been used for more than five years, and PC players including Intel, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Dell and Lenovo have all been aggressively promoting their new PCs, looking to attract consumers to replace their old products.

Intel is now mainly pushing its 14nm Braswell-based SoC processors for the entry-level PC market, succeeding the 22nm Bay Trail. Intel will release upgraded versions of the Braswell processors in the first quarter of 2016 for desktops, and an upgraded one for notebooks in the second quarter.

The Braswell processors will then be succeed by the Apollo Lake-based processors. Apollo Lake processors adopt a dual/quad-core design, 14nm process and Gen9 GPU, and support Ultra HD output, USB Type-C and eMMC 5.0.