Asus readying five to seven ultrabooks, starting at $799

Jos

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Ultrabooks are coming and, as expected, Asus will be among those leading the charge. According to a report by the Financial Times, the company is expected to release "five to seven" models later this year with prices between $799 and $1,999. That's notably higher than Intel’s target price of $999 and under, but we can't really say we're surprised given OEM's component pricing concerns and the manufacturing challenge that the thinner form factor represents.

Asus' chief executive Jerry Shen also commented on Intel's ambition for ultrabooks to make up 40% of the consumer notebook market by the end of 2012, saying this is a very aggressive target that would be difficult to meet before 2013. The company expects its ‘U’ series of ultrabooks to account for 20% of its notebook sales next year.

Besides the technical difficulties involved in designing and manufacturing ultrabooks, Asus claims that there's limited capacity in the supply chain and at best it could handle producing around 200,000 units per month for now. As a reference, Asus shipped 3.1 million notebooks in the second quarter, or roughly 1 million notebooks a month.

Increased production and lower prices will eventually come, but not without any additional supply chain investments. Intel has already said it is setting apart $300 million to push the category over the next 3 to 4 years, though it remains to be seen if more notebook manufacturers decide to get on board. For now only Asus and Acer have talked about their upcoming ultrabook offerings, while Lenovo suggested that it would achieve mainstream prices in 2012.

We should note that Apple and Samsung are already selling systems that meet all of the criteria of an ultrabook -- including pricing -- with the 11.6-inch Samsung Series 9 and 11-inch Apple MacBook Air both starting at $999.

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I know that's not an official picture, but I hope ultrabooks come equipped with three usbs like most laptops in that price range.

"We should note that Apple and Samsung are already selling systems that meet all of the criteria of an ultrabook -- including pricing -- with the 11.6-inch Samsung Series 9 and 11-inch Apple MacBook Air both starting at $999."

Wrong, neither support the instant on feature, and neither offer reasonable performance for the price either. A quad core laptop costs the same vs a very low power dual core at low clock speed.
 
WRONG. None of the Samsung Series 9 notebooks I've found online starts at $999. All of them are well over $1000.

Check your facts.
 
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-NP900X1B-A02-11-6-Inch-Notebook-Black/dp/B0056EY8PS

999.00
 
found on the net:
Asus UX21 runs on Intel Core i5-2557M (1.7GHz) processor (up to Core i7). Another feature that is owned by The Asus UX21 are two USB ports USB 3.0, mini-DisplayPort, mini-HDMI port, a storage capacity of 64GB or 128GB, a glass touchpad...

connectivity will be slashed for sure
weight of 2.2 lbs (1kg) sounds very impressive as well
 
Win7Dev said:
I know that's not an official picture, but I hope ultrabooks come equipped with three usbs like most laptops in that price range.

"We should note that Apple and Samsung are already selling systems that meet all of the criteria of an ultrabook -- including pricing -- with the 11.6-inch Samsung Series 9 and 11-inch Apple MacBook Air both starting at $999."

Wrong, neither support the instant on feature, and neither offer reasonable performance for the price either. A quad core laptop costs the same vs a very low power dual core at low clock speed.

The Mac supports instant on and works very well too.
I do agree though, the specs of the mac are pretty lame.
 
to have i7-cpu in a thin laptop is very good. I would only worry about the cooling system. Ultrabooks are not made for gaming or similar. Maybe programming but nothing more.

I hope clevo makes soem ultrabooks
 
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