ASUS VP Jerry Shen is one of the profiles of the industry that strongly believes in the coming Ultrabook concept where ASUS and Acer will be first to market. For a concept that it believes will replace the majority of the notebooks market it is pretty expensive, something Shen says will change in 2012 when Ivy Bridge arrives.
ASUS is expected to launch its Ultrabooks in October, and not in September that was rumored according to Digitimes. We will then see five to siz models based on UX21 and UX31 with 11.6″ and 13.3″ screens, costing $899 and up. This is according to ASUS’ Jerry Shen a price that taegets the upper mid-range and high-end market.
Intel who is the brain behind the Ultrabook concept has had the goal of keeping prices below $999, which has been a challenge for the manufacturers, mainly because Intel refuse to lower prices of its 17W Sandy Bridge models that are mandatory. Shen says that prices of Ultrabooks will be lower in April next year, when Intel Ivy Bridge is shipping. This hardly comes as a surprise since Intel has stated many times that Ultrabooks are not exoected to kick off for serious until Ivy Bridge is launched.
Several Ultrabooks will go above $999 despite Intel requested a price below this
ASUS expects to ship Ultrabooks in the $600 to $900 price range and it is then an Ultrabook for the mainstream market may become real. Judging from this Intel will offer better prices compared to today, where the cheapest 17W models cost well over $200, and gets close to $300 when you add the chipset. We can always speculate that prices of other components have been lowered to make sure the price requirements are met for an Ultrabook.
Those of you who have been keeping an eye on the Ultrabook development, but hasn’t seen any really interesting models, or simply think the prices are too high, it will not take that long before we will see more and cheaper alternatives. If we are to believe Intel it will not be until Haswell arrives in 2013 when Ultrabooks will be largely available at the $600 price range, but hopefully we will see cheaper models with Ivy Bridge too.
