Intel today announced plans to stop “direct investments” in its Next Unit of Compute (NUC) business. The company hopes its partners will continue to offer compact desktops to those who are interested.
Tom’s Hardware has asked Intel for a statement after learning that Intel sent an email to its NUC partners. As reported, the email appears to have had the line: serve the home. “Intel has decided to stop direct investment in the Next Unit of Compute (NUC) product line…”
Here is Intel’s official response to our request:
“We have decided to stop direct investment in our Next Unit of Computing (NUC) business and shift our strategy to allow our ecosystem partners to continue to innovate and grow their NUC,” Intel said in a statement. It is said that “This decision will not affect Intel’s remaining Client Computing Group (CCG) or Network and Edge Computing (NEX) businesses. We guarantee the fulfillment of all our promises: ongoing support for NUC products currently on the market.”
Intel currently offers three types of NUC systems. Typical compact PCs for consumers and home offices, business and corporate machines that support features like remote management and vPro, high-performance machines designed for gamers and demanding users.
Intel’s own NUC is a popular system and has competed with similar machines from traditional PC brands. But for Intel, which is primarily a chip company, barebones support for a wide range of desktops and laptops is a bit of a burden. What’s more, given the shrinking PC market and fierce competition, it’s likely that the profitability of his NUC business has deteriorated in recent quarters.
That said, it’s no surprise that while the company focuses on profitable chip production, its partners want to continue building smaller machines for the SOHO market, business users and hobbyists. It doesn’t matter.
Under the leadership of new CEO Pat Gelsinger, Intel is exiting several ventures, including 3D NAND memory and SSD divisions, Optane SSD divisions, notebook modem business, barefoot switching business, and most recently servers. It was determined. . These moves by Intel are part of a larger effort to focus more intensively on many core businesses and ideally improve profitability.
