Motherboard manufacturers were undoubtedly displeased with having to pull their Sandy Bridge products off shelves as part of the 6 series chipset recall, but Intel hopes to set things right. DigiTimes reports that the chipmaker has finished negotiating with its partners and has agreed to eat the production and shipping costs of defective motherboards. Despite Intel's commitment to cover certain losses, motherboard makers may still take a hit as the issue is expected to "seriously damage" PC sales in the first quarter.
Major players such as Asus, Gigabyte, ECS, MSI, ASRock, Acer, Lenovo and Toshiba have issued recalls for affected hardware, which includes plenty of Sandy Bridge notebooks. Asus believes the mishap will cut into its first quarter revenue by about 2%, possibly making it the worst of the year. Nonetheless, the manufacturer notes that its second quarter results should prove better than expected because of the delayed demand.
Intel began mass production of its fixed chipsets today and expects to ship small orders to Asus and Gigabyte next week. Supply of B3 stepping Cougar Point chipsets should reach normal levels in April.