Intel Suspends All Operations in Russia as PC Shipments Grind to a Halt
A month after halting all chips sales to the country, Intel is now suspending all business operations in Russia.
“Intel continues to join the global community in condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine and calling for a swift return to peace,” the company said in a statement.
The decision is significant because Intel has offices in Moscow and in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, where the company has operated a software development center since 2000. Staff at the center works on Intel products related to self-driving cars and optimizing the architecture for the company’s chips, according to The Information.
Intel added: “We are working to support all of our employees through this difficult situation, including our 1,200 employees in Russia. We have also implemented business continuity measures to minimize disruption to our global operations.”
The news comes as PC-related shipments to Russia have been drying up. In addition to Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Apple, HP, and Dell, among others have all halted product sales to the country in response to the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. Research firm Canalys now anticipates the top five PC vendors, including Lenovo and Asus, “will likely record zero shipments to Russia throughout the second quarter, and possibly for much longer.”
“These vendors even managed to stop some containers that had been mid-way through the journey to Russia at the end of February and divert those deliveries elsewhere,” Canalys wrote in a Monday research note. “Swift changes to distribution contracts have stopped third parties from selling into Russia too, with the result that there have also been minimal grey market activities.”
As a result, Canalys says pricing for PC products are up in Russia. The country
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