James Delahunty
25 Oct 2011 7:44
Ultrabooks must become more affordable if they are to compete in the market.
Intel Corp. has said it will work with suppliers and manufacturers to bring down the cost of Ultrabooks, a product that it is betting can revive the traditional computer as tablet PCs up the ante.
The super-thin laptops need to come down in price to notebook levels. Acer Inc.'s recent Ultrabook model retails for $899, while the target now is seen at around $699. Intel aims for Ultrabooks to account for 40 percent of the consumer PC market by the end of 2012.
"At some point you'll have to be at that price point, but it doesn't have to be overnight. It takes time to engineer a cost down," said Navin Shenoy, Intel's vice president of sales and marketing.
"More work needs to happen in the ecosystem. Even if we're giving the chips away for free, we couldn't hit the price point we want to hit if we don't work with the rest of the industry."
Ultrabooks will not be affected by the flooding in Thailand, which has forced the shutting down of plants responsible for half of the world's hard disk drives. Ultrabooks do not use traditional HDDs, but opt for solid-state drives for a performance / energy boost instead.