Acer Says It's Not Making Any Money From $799 Ultrabook

[JMcEntegart]

Our dream of a $499 Ultrabook is going to come at a price.

Acer Says It's Not Making Any Money From $799 Ultrabook : Read more

 

[atikkur]

cheaper price is always welcomed..

 

[the_krasno]

It's a risky move but they can get a bigger base in the market which can pay off in the long run.

 

[heman8400]

I've always been under the impression that a "race to the bottom" in any industry, reduces profits. Apple's made a business model (for their computers) on premium parts + higher price = more profits. If they aren't making money at $800, why is the answer "lets lower the price?"

 

[nforce4max]

Reduce the size of the board and then they can make room for a larger cooler which will allow for a higher tdp cpu for more speed.

 

[bloc97]

A recent example of this is Amazon's Kindle Fire, which is priced at $199 but costs more to manufacture. For Acer to sell its Ultrabooks at a loss is more of a risk than selling a games console at a loss. It'll be interesting to see how fast Acer can take the Ultrabook price down to $499.

WHAT? I can't believe that a single Ultrabook can take more than 499$ to manufacture...
I always thought that those things were manufactured in groups and cost only 200$ for 10 ultrabooks.

 

[bloc97]

[citation][nom]nforce4max[/nom]Reduce the size of the board and then they can make room for a larger cooler which will allow for a higher tdp cpu for more speed.[/citation]

Lol an Ultra(large)book...

 

[masterasia]

I would buy an Ultrabook for $500. Let's hope battery life improves too. So far it looks like the HP Folio has the best battery life.

 

[mikenygmail]

It's not true that Acer is not making money on an $800 thin laptop.
They don't even cost $500 to make, let alone $600 or $700.
Unless this supposed $800 price includes a gigantic TV ad campaign, it's nonsense.

 

[bloc97]

[citation][nom]heman8400[/nom]I've always been under the impression that a "race to the bottom" in any industry, reduces profits. Apple's made a business model (for their computers) on premium parts + higher price = more profits. If they aren't making money at $800, why is the answer "lets lower the price?"[/citation]

Because their product is already in-shelf and they can't afford paying an revision (taking back all products and improving them), so the best they can hope is to lower the price... (at least they don't loose 100% of the price that took to make products)

 

[lpedraja2002]

[citation][nom]bloc97[/nom]WHAT? I can't believe that a single Ultrabook can take more than 499$ to manufacture... I always thought that those things were manufactured in groups and cost only 200$ for 10 ultrabooks.[/citation]

My thoughts exactly, these Ultrabook are underclocked laptops with a Solid State Drive and a lot slimmer too, so how could they not make any money out of them? Must be the Solid State Drives prices which were affected by the Thailand floods.

 

[Guest]

Cheaper is not always welcomed. It could really mean a poorly put together system. Ultrabooks will be expensive. No way around it due to the expense of its parts. You'll need an SSD (but you can ditch the video card with Ivy and Trinity), USB3, eSata, and possibly Thunderbolt for external GPU. You will also need an expensive LCD display plus some kind of capability for tablet functionality. This will make it hard to put out cheap systems. I wonder also, will they have some kind of 3G/4G capability on board?

 

[neoverdugo]

No wonder the ultrabooks are somewhat expensive. The idiots of intel convinced the laptop makers to use medium to high end components. Which includes high end i3, i5 and i7s, along with SSD at 128, 240 and 256 GB range. The problem is that the intel CPUs and SSD are expensive on their own, combined with a laptop and you got yourself a desktop-on-the-road, pun intended (without an adequate graphic processor). If acer wants a 500 dollar ultrabook, they should look at AMD or ARM. I bet the price tags will go down along the manufacture costs.

 

[Guest]

Neoverdugo, you are probably right. The Ultrabooks Intel envisions are fully capable road warrior PCs that can do anything your desktop can do PLUS the mobility of a tablet with long bettery lives and touch capability. That is not a cheap system.

Sub $500 systems are probably traditional netbook type machines with ATOM, C-50, ARM type systems with little hardware that are very specific in functionality. Still much more functional than tablet, but not overly useful for large scale business.

 

[obsama1]

The Acer Ultrabook is OK, but the Zenbook is still better.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]treetopboy[/nom]Neoverdugo, you are probably right. The Ultrabooks Intel envisions are fully capable road warrior PCs that can do anything your desktop can do PLUS the mobility of a tablet with long bettery lives and touch capability. That is not a cheap system.Sub $500 systems are probably traditional netbook type machines with ATOM, C-50, ARM type systems with little hardware that are very specific in functionality. Still much more functional than tablet, but not overly useful for large scale business.[/citation]

If you don't mind going a little thicker, there are $300 or so laptops with fairly good performance, especially the A6 Llano ones. It's not having mobile performance that's the problem, it's having it in such a thin form factor. Cheap notebooks don't need to have crap Atoms, C-50s, ARMs, etc, the ultrabooks are just too thin to use the cheaper notebook components.

For example, it wasn't until a month or two ago that high performance CPU coolers came out for ultrabook form factors that were cheap to make when a company developed a thinner, high efficiency heat pipe technology.

 

[eddieroolz]

You're going to have to pay for mobility, but at $799 I thought they'd be making some money. Intel might be ripping the OEMs off in this case.

 

[bloc97]

[citation][nom]eddieroolz[/nom]You're going to have to pay for mobility, but at $799 I thought they'd be making some money. Intel might be ripping the OEMs off in this case.[/citation]

I agree with you, sub-1000$ Ultrabooks (good quality) are somewhat rare. And this Ultrabook at 799$ should sell very well...

 

[jaber2]

If only others would do the same, I would love to pay $100 for the new iPad.

 

[dalauder]

[citation][nom]jaber2[/nom]If only others would do the same, I would love to pay $100 for the new iPad.[/citation]You're talking unrelated gibberish.

 

[dalauder]

[citation][nom]mikenygmail[/nom]It's not true that Acer is not making money on an $800 thin laptop. They don't even cost $500 to make, let alone $600 or $700. Unless this supposed $800 price includes a gigantic TV ad campaign, it's nonsense.[/citation]It has to include ALL costs if they're talking about "profitable". An add campaign is absolutely necessary or nobody will know what an "Ultrabook" is.

A lot of people here are confused about "high-end parts". Apple uses the same parts inside. The only difference is a higher quality case and Apple software, for the most part.

Blazorthon brought up a good point that Ultrabooks are expensive because they all use new proprietary parts. Once there are standard ultrathin coolers produced by the millions instead of quantities of 8,000, it'll get substantially cheaper. Right now, these things actually do cost 1.5x as much to make as a typical laptop, maybe 2x as much. Considering that laptop manufacturers are pretty much all losing money on these sub $500 laptops, of course $800 is hard to profit from with an Ultrabook.

Once Ultrabooks can get down the to $500 range and pull of i3-370M/A6-3400M performance, I think they'll displace laptops for most people, which wouldn't be a bad thing.

Now the AMD ultra-slim line has a lot of potential, I think. That's assuming they can do it for less than Intel, although Sandy Bridge i3's and lower are pretty cheap.

 

[de5_Roy]

bring out trinity!! hopefully it'll undercut intel's prices and deliver very good igpu unlike intel's. for example, compare cheap 4-core llano laptop prices with a 4 core from intel's.

 

[dalauder]

[citation][nom]de5_roy[/nom]bring out trinity!! hopefully it'll undercut intel's prices and deliver very good igpu unlike intel's. for example, compare cheap 4-core llano laptop prices with a 4 core from intel's.[/citation]I'm admittedly more excited about Ivy Bridge, but I'm still curious to see how Trinity does. For most users, Intel's HD Graphics are more than enough. But it's not Intel holding back the form factor. These low power i5's are only $225 (tray, cheaper for OEM). Even if Trinity shaved a $100 off the price (it won't), when we're still a far cry from $500 Ultrabooks.

I really think the Ultrabook form factor is a blunder for Intel. It's reminding people that they don't need Intel's full CPU power with these low-power versions--helping people to realize that AMD CPUs would also be plenty adequate for any similar laptop.

 

[sonofliberty08]

rename to kamasutra book, preloaded with all private movie, sell it like hot cake

 

[alidan]

they are selling it at break even prices... good business strategy.

you don't take a loss, you don't make a profit either, the point of this is to get the product out there, and get people to think of it next time they upgrade, and hopefully by than, you can make a profit.

that said, i would never get acer because of all the screen problems i hear they have.