Ah, it was a fun ride, thinking that ultra slim, highly competitive notebooks called Ultrabooks will actually cost under $1000. It’s the latest rumor circulating the business world and we tend to think it’s true- Asus and HP realized that, right now, they couldn’t possible sell 0.8 inch thick computers with Sandy Bridge hardware and tablet like features for less than $1600.
As always, it has to do with production costs. Asian suppliers are claiming that key components, like battery and SSD, probably, are too expensive to allow for the under $1000 price to be realistic. If they were to offer computers at those prices, Asus and HP would probably have to cut many corners when it comes to quality and performance, an act that would make the launch a complete failure.
Asus initially intended to launch the 11.6 inch UX21 and 13.3 inch UX31 in early October, and if this will happen, such a computer will cost at least $1500. Considering that the ultraportable notebook market experienced a general depression, Asus intends to launch only a small amount of Ultrabooks during this autumn and strike with a series production in 2012, if the demand is satisfactory.
Ultrabooks might disappear into thin air..pwa, pwa, pwaaa
This is a big “if” and we might see Asus getting out of the race pretty soon, as the company decided to have an overall cautious attitude on the market. As for HP, they’ll probably have a similar policy, so this year might be a little pale in Ultrabook hysteria. Hopefully this new and exciting category will get the attention it deserves and more manufacturers will jump on board.
Intel is willing to offer discounts for components used for Ultrabooks and is also hard at work developing Ivy Bridge, a new platform especially aimed at Ultrabooks. The future platform is said to take in less power than Sandy Bridge and offer astonishing performance; it’d better be, considering that Intel claims that these ultra thin notebooks and netbooks will rule the market by 2013.
We’d love to believe them and have a worthy opponent for MacBook Air, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed for the component market to cool down a little. Until then, we can enjoy some almost Ultrabooks, like the U36SD or Samsung Series 9, which are in many regards part of the category.
Ivy Bridge will reduce the manufacturing size to 22nm in addition to adding some of their new technology to further improve performance and power efficiency. While the smaller manufacturing will help reduce costs as well and the reduced thermals will reduce the design constraints that further adds to the cost of the system the further you shrink the design.
So it’s a good bet to wait till Ivy Bridge replaces Sandy Bridge before expecting Ultrabooks to take off.
Ivy Bridge will reduce the manufacturing size to 22nm in addition to adding some of their new technology to further improve performance and power efficiency. While the smaller manufacturing will help reduce costs as well and the reduced thermals will reduce the design constraints that further adds to the cost of the system the further you shrink the design.
So it’s a good bet to wait till Ivy Bridge replaces Sandy Bridge before expecting Ultrabooks to take off.