Intel wants to get ahead in the emerging SSD market and seems to believe they can do it by going after channel partners as opposed to individual customers. Starting with the Core i7, Intel has been offering steep discounts on hardware prices for vendors who will pick up both a Core i7 CPU and SSD hard drives. Targeting North America, Europe and China, Intel is offering discounts as high as 15% on the combined price of SSD drives and Core i7 CPUs, provided they are ordered together.
That's a pretty significant discount, especially when applied to bulk orders. Whether or not vendors will then pass on that discount to their customers remains to be seen, but it'll likely encourage laptop manufacturers to include SSDs more often. Hopefully they'll be able to offer SSD-coupled laptops at a lower premium than they are currently, as it would certainly help the SSD market grow.