Intel's Panther Lake & Nova Lake CPUs Are Expected To Bring the Company 'Back in the Game' as Team Blue Shows Renewed Confidence in Its PC Roadmap

Intel's VP, John Pitzer, provided us with a rundown of what to expect from the firm on the consumer side moving into next year, with the 'spotlight' products being Panther Lake and Nova Lake SKUs.

Team Blue hasn't performed too well in the consumer business, mainly due to lineups like Arrow Lake, which Intel struggled to keep up with the competition. Particularly, AMD's X3D CPUs and the Ryzen 9000 series were highly popular among gamers, which had put up a massive blow to Intel's PC market share, and it made consumers 'underconfident' in the company's products. However, with the next-gen Panther Lake and Nova Lake lineup, Intel expects to "shore up its position" in both the notebook and PC segments, according to Intel's VP, John Pitzer (at UBS), who stated that the firm aims to become competitive across the entire stack.

I mean we feel pretty good about the PC roadmap. Quite frankly, I think that this year was a challenging year for us at the high end of the desktop market. We've been pretty, I think, transparent about that. I think a lot of the damage that has occurred there has already happened. I think that -- as you think about Panther Lake, I think it shores up our position in the notebook market.

And as you bring Nova Lake late next year into 2027, we'll have a competitive part across the PC stack, across both notebook and desktop.

Of course, one of the biggest releases by Intel for next year is the Nova Lake and Panther Lake CPU lineups, as both will focus on integrating the 18A node and feature several impressive upgrades. The Panther Lake lineup is expected to debut at next year's CES, and we already have a roundup around the lineup out here, but, for a quick summary, you are looking at new P/E-core architectures, along with the advanced 'Celestial' Xe3 iGPU architecture, and a 5th-generation NPU onboard, which will take edge AI to a new level. However, Intel has been decent on the mobile front; however, its market share has declined on the desktop.

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