Intel Says CPU Prices Irrelevant in Ultrabooks

words of ease like when there's no competition .

40 percent?!?!?
Maybe if they sold for under $600 and became a replacement for low-end notebooks.
I just don't see the need for a super-netbook in a world where tablets are becoming the media-consumption device of choice.

... sorry as i forgot to add this but what about the price of your sandy bridge ulv's being a nice big chunk of the 600-700 cost estimate ? add to that the thin requirement resulting in stringent designs , lets just see how they do it . being able to pull off another MB Air show is not something trivial especially at those selling price targets .

If CPU prices are irrelevant, does that mean they are giving them away for free when a computer is labeled an ultrabook? Weird...


(More likely, Intel will have a sliding price that keeps Ultrabooks hovering at the target price).

No, they're saying that they won't be able to hit target prices even if they give them away for free.

Either get rid of the keyboard and make a pad, or make proper notebook, larger, solid yet light.

With Apple Air 11" at $999 so much for high-priced Apple HW rant.
Same for the iPad. The Apple competitors can't meet Apple prices. Hmm....

That a great idea! Intel should set a good example for the rest industry by lower the prices of their cpus

Another pointless piece of tech, if ultrabooks want to compete with regular laptops they must have lower prices.
Its everything about price.
Who the hell wants a laptop less powerfull and more expensive just becasue its little thinner? Its just dumb

Unlike apple their competitors don`t use cheap slaves to manufacture their computer insides ... they actually have to pay those guys. Sheesh.

Apple is selling the 13" MB Air for $1300 with a CPU that has a "Recommended Channel Price" of $250.

Is Intel trying to tell us that nobody can do it cheaper than Apple?

lol.
U can be 100% sure that in every computer u own there is something made by a Chinese worker, who's woefully underpaid by western standards.
Doesn't mean it's slave labour though. The guys at Foxconn earn decent money by Chinese standards.

Oh Foxconn workers get paid, after they sign a contract that implies a promise not to kill themselves.

More like your Atom cpus are Irrelevant intel.

Chill i know that .. actually every giant in the world uses cheap labor ...was more like a joke but still ... something is not being payed much so that apple can still produce something "cheap" and get shit loads of profit after it anyway.

Meh, they will get there...

What is Intel's deal? If they want an ultra book so bad want don't they figure out how to build one instead of harping on manufacturers. They want them so bad, (to sell more processors I assume) but they don't seem to be doing a whole lot to help.

Let us not forget that Intel already has an Ultrabook in that hands of many a user, the Macbook Air. Intel simply wants its other partners to up the anty.

I think that there is a significant market for the Ultrabook. I would much rather have a higher quality PC based Macbook air with an i7 then any tablet device. Just my preferred method of interface.

-CB

I'm pretty sure if they gave them away for free they could hit 1000 bucks pretty easy. Intel's trying so hard to push their new design, and while it's a good design, they need to help out somehow. They can't just expect manufacturers to do what they say because Intel told them to.

Ok, I'll bite. Amazon Kindle Fire android tablet $199.99 - iPad $499.99

Not a bad example.
You do have to consider though that the Kindle Fire is going to be subsidized by ads and ebook purchases. I think I read that Amazon is going to lose money on the sale of the device itself.
Also, the Fire is a far inferior device in terms of every spec.

That said, I'd rather have 2 Kindle Fires and a steak dinner than an iPad.

CBFELTERBUSH,

What if the Ultrabook IS NOT an Intel laptop?

Remember, in the decade long monopolist stuff that got Intel in trouble, Intel was using bribes and threats against both manufacturers and retailers to keep AMD's market share in the single digits, AND they were determined to keep AMD in the low margin product category.

Since the Consent Decree got issued to Intel last year, did Apple get ballsy and just pull an "AMD INSIDE" the Air?

Seems to explain why Intel is bent on cutting into Mac Air's sales by paying manufacturers to underprice the ULtrabooks.

Trinity, 17 watts - which includes discrete graphics power.

Right now, 18-watt Intel processor which sucks at graphics.

Maybe intel saw that its market share is more in danger now than it has ever been since 2006. Right now AMD has the low end notebook market, and server market if adoption of AMD solutions is adopted better. AMD just has the better product in these markets. Right now the only market for Intel are devices that will have a discrete graphics card and cost over $1000. That market has been shrinking every year and Intel has let everyone know that they don't plan on changing that in the next few years.

OK, it's like this:

Laptop chassis: $30
Smaller chassis made of aluminum: $200. Raw material cost of aluminum: $20

Laptop motherboard: $60
Virtually identical ultrabook motherboard: $200

Laptop display: $100
Virtually identical ultrabook display: $200

Pentium CPU: $60
CPU binned for a UB that came off the same wafer: $300.


Yeah, some people will actually believe that smaller amounts of material manufactured in extremely similar ways just HAVE TO BE very different in price, and not just because Intel's management chose to arbitrarily charge that much...

Its seems like a case of little competition if you ask me. You can't tell me that the CPU price is irrelevant. Somebody has to give up something somewhere. Either they all come down together or they lose out.
I've found "ultrabooks" that offer a better feature set than the macbook air for the price. My next notebook will probably be an ultrabook.

ultra books from intel its a pain in the a s s . the intel prefer to die at delivery processor for lower bucks.

i really think the apple move for amd in the next year. because the Apu of amd is still the big one in the market.

My non apple notebook PC was made the American way... by a 3 year old kid in China working a 16 hour shift.

For 1000$, you can get a normal laptop with the following spec:
-Intel Core i7 2630QM(2.00GHz)
-17.3"
-8GB Memory DDR3
-1TB HDD DVD±RW/CD-RW
-NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M

Screw ultrabooks, discrete gfx card are the norm, imo... At that price range.

but with the normal laptop you wont get the extreme thinness and lack of ports and functionality (even though both devices will have largely the same footprint and thus if you are in a situation where you cant bring the normal laptop, you wont be able to bring the ultrabook either.

It all comes down to, do you want a laptop that will give you lots of features and performance for your money, or do you want a laptop that doesn't deliver when it comes to features and performance but is slightly thinner, allowing you to show off the systems most useful feature which is sticking the laptop into a large envelope, in order to distract yourself from the lack of features and performance.

lies.
because intel set cpu price too high.
in today's economy imo no one wants to buy a glorified $1000 netbook - yeah, that's what ultrabooks are - overpriced netbooks.
intel's the one whose cpus have been used in netbooks the most. they could easily design a price-performance balanced cpu for ultrabooks as they did with atom for netbooks. instead they opt for costly ulv stuff and blame the oems. what a load of bulldozer. i don't think ivy bridge will be cheap enough/reasonably priced when its released. their sh...stuff won't sell unless they're priced right, i still remember umpc, ultraportable pcs, tablet pcs.
amd's still testing water with their laptop cpus (imo llano, bobcat are very good for what they do) they could help bring ultrabook prices down only if they were capable of maintaining their schedule and production.

As an adult male, I would never touch an 11" MacBook Air (or any 11" laptop). I use a 13.3", relatively light-weight laptop, and the keyboard is still a little narrow for my liking. I couldn't use an 11" because my hands would fall all over the keyboard and cause more carpel tunnel problems than I already have.

The ultrabooks are trying to meet the $999 mark for their 13" ultrabooks, where as the MacBook Air 13" is $1299 (I know, I just bought one for my girl). Honestly, if price is that much of a concern, just wait. Prices will fall.

The original MacBook Air 13" cost $1799 (w/ a 64GB SSD), and the latest version using sandy bridge processors is $1299 (w/ a 128GB SSD). It'll be interesting to see if, and how much, the price will drop with the ivy bridge processors and whether ultrabook manufacturers can meet or beat Apple's price point.

People are neglecting the fact that apple owns its own OS, and can bundle it very cheaply. Intel does not own an OS and this is the second or third most expensive part of the build.