Greatly touted by Intel as the next big thing in notebook development, ultrabooks is [...]]]>

The Inverse Law of Tech Prices: the smaller the computer, the more expensive.

The Inverse Law of Technology Prices states that,

1. The smaller the computer, the more expensive
2. Prices of all technology will fall with time (except Apple products)
3. It has not been tested whether number 2 is true with regards to Ultrabooks

Greatly touted by Intel as the next big thing in notebook development, ultrabooks is seen as a strong competitor to netbooks and the traditional notebook, given their good processing power, portability and targeted price. Asus, which announced its first ultrabook, the UX21 at Computex this year in Taipei, is now predicting a off-the-shelf price of $1,000 to $2,000.

According to the Taipei Times,

Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), the world’s No. 5 PC brand, yesterday said its upcoming UX series Ultrabook platform would fail to carry price tags of less than US$1,000, as claimed by Intel Corp.

“Unless we use Intel Core i3 chips [the Ultrabooks will not be less than US$1,000]. The price tags will have to go beyond US$1,000 if [more advanced] i5 and i7 chips go into the notebooks,” a person familiar with UX development said.

The UX series will mainly use i5 and i7 to boost performance, he said.

The i5 and i7 chips, which are more expensive, plus the operating system and solid-state hard drives would account for about 50 percent of the cost of the ultraslim notebooks, thus driving up the price of the UX series to between US$1,000 and US$2,000, he said.

This falls short of the expectations put forth by Intel when marketing the Ultrabook, promising prices that are US$1,000 or less. And this begs the question whether you would be better off just buying a Macbook Air and dual-booting Windows on it to achieve great portable computing with the style, status and whatever feelings you get with a Macbook.

However, one must note that Asus is equipping its premier Ultrabook with the highest-end of components – Intel Core i7 processors and a solid state drive, both big culprits of a fattening price tag. And then it comes naturally that if Asus were to put less esoteric and more down-to-earth components, perhaps it would be able to achieve Intel’s vision of an Ultrabook, and that would mean something like a Core i3 and hard drive. Asus does promise a version with an i3 which will cost less than $1,000, though. Of course, Asus shouldn’t take the rap for all this either – Acer isn’t expecting their’s to be less than $1,000 either.

I’m not sure who Intel intends to target the Ultrabook at, but I suspect that it would be somewhere along the lines of the college-going-person who has a problem with weight and has no interest in serious gaming. And that means that the Ultrabook has a problem – the high-end netbook with AMD’s Fusion chips can easily wipe the Ultrabook out in terms of price and functionality, perhaps size too, although it won’t be in the thickness dimension.

Asus is the first of many manufacturers which are going to roll out their own iterations of the Ultrabook. The second-half of 2011 will see HP, Dell, Lenovo and Acer come into the fray in Q3 and Q4 2011. Perhaps it will be then and there that things start looking up for the consumer looking for a Ultrabook. The question is who will be able to achieve all that Intel envisions?

On a Non-GAAP basis, revenue was $13.1 billion, operating income was $4.2 billion, net income was $3.2 billion, and EPS was 59 cents.  On a GAAP basis, the company [...]]]>

Fusion is the least of the Atom's woes

SANTA CLARA, Calif., July 20, 2011 – Intel Corporation today reported its fifth consecutive quarter of record revenue, with double-digit revenue growth across all business segments.

On a Non-GAAP basis, revenue was $13.1 billion, operating income was $4.2 billion, net income was $3.2 billion, and EPS was 59 cents.  On a GAAP basis, the company reported second-quarter revenue of $13.0 billion, operating income of $3.9 billion, net income of $3.0 billion, and EPS of 54 cents.

The company generated approximately $4.0 billion in cash from operations, paid cash dividends of $961 million, and used $2.0 billion to repurchase 93 million shares of common stock.

“We achieved a significant new milestone in the second quarter, surpassing $13.0 billion in revenue for the first time,” said Paul Otellini, Intel president and CEO. “Strong corporate demand for our most advanced technology, the surge of mobile devices and Internet traffic fueling data center growth, and the rapid rise of computing in emerging markets drove record results. Intel’s 23 percent revenue growth in the first half and our increasing confidence in the second half of 2011 position us to grow annual revenue in the mid-20 percent range.”

Unfortunately for us fans of netbooks, Intel is reporting a slowdown in Intel Atom’s sales, with revenue at $352 million, falling 15 per cent from last year’s Q2 results. Concurring with this fact is Paul Otellini, Intel’s president and CEO, who laments that the netbook market is weak.

Otellini alleges that netbooks faces serious competition from tablets and full-sized but low-priced laptops, and therefore is gearing the Intel Atom up for the tablet market, with its Oak Trail version.

Liliputing, however, alleges that the reason to this is that the reason to this is can be attributed to the levelling off of consumer demand for netbooks. “They’re not growing at the ridiculously fast rate that they were in 2008 and 2009. And that makes a lot of sense, because the product category isn’t brand new anymore,” says Liliputing.

Whether or not you are of the opinion that netbooks are on the way to its graveyard with Intel focusing on tablets and the new Ultrabook is yet to be seen. Some people do believe that that is so for reasons such as irrelevance, obsolete-from-the-day-you-buy-it, competition from tablets, Intel looking elsewhere, etc, but the truth is that it might just turn out to be a niche sector of the computer market, but to say it will totally go away is a bit implausible.

Info via: Intel Newsroom, ComputerWorld, Liliputing