Unsure of how Intel’s “Ultrabook” laptops will compete with the iPad and MacBook Air, manufacturers are “testing the water” by ordering less than 50,000 units for later this month. Acer, Lenovo, Toshiba and Asustek are reportedly uncertain how the revamped laptops will be greeted by consumers shifting to tablets and cloud computing. That sounds to us like they’re giving up and conceding victory to the MacBook Air before they even got started competing with it.
The news of a small initial production of the “ultrabook” concept comes as Intel prepares for a conference next week to settle “technology bottlenecks” slowing adoption of the design, reports industry publication DigiTimes. Those issues have prompt what the report terms a “conservative attutude” among companies already battered by the move to tablets and lightweight laptops, such as the MacBook Air. Among the cautious manufacturers are those struggling to recover after netbook demand fell off a cliff.
Intel introduced the “Ultrabook” concept in May, highlighting a design with “tablet-like features” that was “thin, light and elegant,” a blatant attempt by the ailing PC industry to lure consumers drawn to Apple’s iPad and MacBook Air.
The problem for PC makers may be keeping “Ultrabooks” priced below $1,000. Although Apple CEO Tim Cook is known for developing a solid supply chain able to grab large volumes and using cash reserves to save on costs, ultrabook manufacturers reportedly are search high and low for magnesium-aluminum components, as well as the available capacity to build the PC bodies.
Some analysts see this struggle to match price and features why ultrabooks won’t catch hold until at least 2012. Even before the first “ultrabooks” roll off the assembly line, the viability of the new line of PCs is already in question.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
12 responses to “Ultrabook Makers ‘Testing Waters’ Against iPad and MacBook Air”
Just like Steve said, ‘The year or the copycats’. Everything Apple does is mimicked in a completely blatant way by competitors who can just never seem to get it right – those who cannot innovate, imitate.
This reminds me of a famous quote from Antitrust (movie). “Those who don’t innovate are doomed to die.”
Remember the “Apple tax”?. It seems to have disappeared. Competitors don’t seem to be able to produce a competing product with anywhere close to the specs of Apple products at a lower price than Apple’s. This is not even taking into account customer service, quality and design… which have always been Apple strong points.
There is very little incentive for a customer (other than Apple haters) to buy anything but the real deal.
Even if the mfgs get the hardware in order, it’s still running Win/Lin. Which isn’t all that bad, but it’s no where near as good as OS X. It’s the whole package of Hardware/OS which makes Apple products better than others.
“The Year Of The CopyCats” -Steve Jobs. If this writer dug a little deeper & did a bit more homework on the subject, he’d know that Apple not only bought all of the available aluminum, they also bought all of “lathes” that press the aluminum into unibody parts. The lathes won’t be available to anyone until 2016. Strike one for the copycats. The more OEM’s that use SSD & flash storage components, the faster the price falls for them too. As soon as this happens, the MacBook Pro line will be fitted with SSD’s too. Strike two! Thanks Microsoft & OEM’s! lol! But, in the end, the OEM’s will just be wasting more capital, in another market they’re NOT profiting in! ($0 being earned in the “tablet” market) Nice! Keep it up! By the next inauguration, there might be only 1 dominant technology company selling products! (I see a strikeout coming, lol!)
I agree there is a lot of coping going on this year but Apple is included. Only fanboys would deny it.