Intel Ultrabooks to Dip Below $1,000 by End of Year
Intel has big plans for its Ultrabook concept. At least one Santa Clara executive is banking on Ultrabooks accounting for 40 percent of the entire notebook market by the end of 2012, and while that sounds a bit ambitious, Intel is even more confident that we'll see Ultrabook models ship for less than $999 by the end of this year.
How confident? Enough to pour $300 million into an Ultrabook fund, details of which we covered here. We also touched on Asus' UX21, which provided the first glimpse of what an Ultrabook will look like earlier this year at the Computex convention. But it's not just Asus jumping on board. According to Reuters, Acer and Lenovo also have plans to release Ultrabooks, and between the three, prices will dip down to three digits, possibly as early as this quarter.
Acer's version of an Ultrabook.
"We are working very hard to bring the Ultrabook into the mainstream... the prices will come down over time," Erik Reid, Intel's PC Client Group Manager of Mobile Platforms Division, said during a press conference in Taipei today.
Intel isn't planning to stop at the mainstream consumer market. The Santa Clara chip maker is also pitching its Ultrabook concept at heavy hitters in the enterprise sector, including Dell and HP, though nothing immediate is planned. When they do ship, however, we suspect the idea of a powerful, lightweight, and trendy machine will be one that's well received in the workplace.
How confident? Enough to pour $300 million into an Ultrabook fund, details of which we covered here. We also touched on Asus' UX21, which provided the first glimpse of what an Ultrabook will look like earlier this year at the Computex convention. But it's not just Asus jumping on board. According to Reuters, Acer and Lenovo also have plans to release Ultrabooks, and between the three, prices will dip down to three digits, possibly as early as this quarter.
Acer's version of an Ultrabook.
"We are working very hard to bring the Ultrabook into the mainstream... the prices will come down over time," Erik Reid, Intel's PC Client Group Manager of Mobile Platforms Division, said during a press conference in Taipei today.
Intel isn't planning to stop at the mainstream consumer market. The Santa Clara chip maker is also pitching its Ultrabook concept at heavy hitters in the enterprise sector, including Dell and HP, though nothing immediate is planned. When they do ship, however, we suspect the idea of a powerful, lightweight, and trendy machine will be one that's well received in the workplace.
