Acer, the
world’s fourth-largest PC vendor, is putting a lot at stake in the Intel-backed ultrabook
concept, with its chairman reportedly predicting that once prices on the
systems come down next year, the Wintel-based devices will be the major growth
driver of the PC industry.
Apple, Google
and Wintel will be the primary PC platforms in 2012, Acer Chairman T.J. Wang
said in a report from Taiwanese news site DigiTimes.
However, within the next two years, Apple’s influence will wane a bit, while
Wintel’s will grow, due in large part to the rise of ultrabooks, super-thin and
light notebooks with features found on tablets, including instant-on and
always-connected capabilities and long battery life.
Ultrabooks,
which have been championed by Intel, will take off in 2012 as the price of the
systems comes down to as low as $699, Wang said. At that price, ultrabooks will
be able to challenge both Apple’s MacBook Pro thin notebook and tablets.
Pricing has
been a major issue since Intel executives first introduced the ultrabook
concept in May. Acer, Asus, Lenovo and Toshiba were among the first PC makers
to support the ultrabook idea, and all have since released the first of their
ultrabooks, which are powered by Intel’s current 2nd Generation Core
Sandy Bridge chips.
However, Intel
is readying the release next year of its 22-nanometer “Ivy Bridge” chips, which
promise greater performance and energy efficiency over the Sandy Bridge
offerings. They also will feature Intel’s new 3D Tri-Gate transistor
architecture to help drive down power consumption.
Intel has
outlined several specifications—including a thickness of less than 0.8 inches,
as key parts of the ultrabook ideal, and the burden is on component makers to
meet the specifications while still helping drive the cost to less than $1,000.
Most of the initial ultrabooks from Acer and others run more than $1,000.
Intel has made
several moves to support systems makers and help drive down the cost of
ultrabooks, including offering architectural reference designs and creating a $300
million fund to help hardware and software makers that develop technologies
for ultrabooks.
Wang also
confirmed that Acer
would streamline its product lines starting next year, with the company
paring its offerings by two-thirds, according to DigiTimes. The goal is to complete the streamlining project within
three years.
However, while
the product lineup may shrink, Acer officials are expecting sales to grow 10
percent annually. Acer in the third quarter held 10.6 percent of the worldwide
PC market in units shipped, trailing Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Dell,
according to market research firm Gartner.
This comes
days after reports surfaced that both
Acer and Asus were planning to remove some notebooks and netbooks from
their respective product lines, in hopes of gaining better brand value and a
more focused corporate strategy.
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