Acer expects
ultrabooks to drop in price around 20 percent early next year, according to
company president Jim Wong.
Wong is quoted
in Taiwanese publication DigiTimes Dec. 1 as saying that ultrabook
prices will drop to around $500 in 2013, thanks in large part to an influx of
the super-thin laptops from various manufacturers. Acer ships around 100,000
ultrabooks per month.
Ultrabooks are
poised to become the next big thing in consumer electronics, at least if the
2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), due to take place in Las Vegas in
January, is any indication. There, manufacturers plan on unveiling dozens of
new ultrabook models whose robust specs are matched only by their lighter
weight and thinness.
At a New York
City event Nov. 18, manufacturers, ranging from Asus and Acer to Toshiba and
Hewlett-Packard, demonstrated their ultrabook models. Intel remains an
aggressive driver of the nascent phenomenon, partnering with companies to issue
devices that conform to the chip maker’s exacting specifications.
Ultrabooks in
many ways represent an attempt by Intel and those manufacturers to leverage the
same interest in thin, portable devices that has driven the tablet
phenomenon—at prices that assure them a higher margin than netbooks.
As far back as
the summer of 2009, the industry was already responding to the margin concerns
inherent in the then-popular netbooks, or ultra-portable laptops with low-power
hardware and a cheap price. That July, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told
analysts that ultra-thins would arrive on the market with better specs at a
higher cost—presumably running versions of Windows that offered his company
higher profits.
“We want
people to be able to get the advantages of lightweight performance and be able
to spend more money with us,” he said.
If the price
of ultrabooks starts to dive, however, it would institute the same sort of
margin squeeze for manufacturers that led to their creation in the first place.
It would also replicate the current situation with tablets, where manufacturers
have begun to slash prices in a bid to perk up anemic sales and better compete
with Apple’s iPad.
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