$699 Ultrabooks to be Available in Starting 2013

News
By Wolfgang Gruener
published

Yes, those $700 Ultrabooks are coming, but not until next year.

We have been hearing about $700 Ultrabooks for quite some time and it appears that PC vendors are now aiming for this price point in a much more determined way. Digitimes quotes supply chain makers in Taiwan claiming that there will be many $699 Ultrabooks available next year.

Not surprisingly, these will be not the kind of systems you are going to brag about. For $700, you can expect "fiberglass-reinforced plastic or metal-plastic hybrid chassis, slim HDDs or HDD/SSD hybrid drives, conventional batteries and non-touch screens," the publication wrote. The purpose of these computers is simply to generate sales volume and help the category get off the ground.

If you want the aluminum unibody or carbon-fiber chassis, SSDs, Li-polymer batteries and Windows 8 touch screens, you will still have to shell out at least $1,000 next year. Research coming out of Taiwan estimates global Ultrabook sales to end up at about 16.7 million units this year, and 31.6 million units in 2013. A recent study published by IHS slashed a previous Ultrabook unit forecast from 22 to just 10.3 million units for this year. IHS forecasts 44 million Ultrabooks to be sold next year.

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Wolfgang Gruener
23 Comments Comment from the forums
  • A Bad Day
    Seems that AMD is losing a publicity battle with their Ultrathin. What little of my friends that know about Ultrabook don't know anything about AMD's counter.
    Reply
  • joytech22
    I'll certainly be getting one of the touch screen models which won't be anywhere near $700.
    PSST.. Heads up.. we already have $700 models from Acer.
    Reply
  • There will be plenty of decent ultrabooks for $700 next year. Intel will release Haswell in early Q2 and price of IvyBridge ultrabooks will drop significantly. They won't have the battery life of the Haswell versions, but they will still be significant portables for $700. Like everything, you just have to wait a little longer. By the time Intel comes out with Broadwell, ultrabook will be the standard as there will be so much thermal headrom in those portables that there will be no need for 35W chips anymore.
    Reply
  • echondo
    A Bad DaySeems that AMD is losing a publicity battle with their Ultrathin. What little of my friends that know about Ultrabook don't know anything about AMD's counter.
    WHAT!? AMD has their own "Ultrabook" type laptops?!?! Thank you for the heads up!

    I just want a laptop with 1920x1080 display and integrated GPU that is a quad core with 8GB of RAM. I don't care about a hard drive, I'm just going to slap in a Samsung 830/840 anyway! I'm not going to game, just want a laptop that can do the basics like Libre Office and web browsing!

    Is it to much to ask for and for it to be less than or ~$600?
    Reply
  • Azn Cracker
    Lol I just bought an Sony Vaio T ultrabook for $580 after rebate last month
    Reply
  • esrever
    They keep saying it will be cheaper later. I doubt they will hit that price point with any kind of quality since they charge so much for the CPUs.
    Reply
  • tomfreak
    too expensive for me, $400 is the more reasonable price.
    Reply
  • DjEaZy
    ... no good GPU? No OpenCL? No, thx!
    Reply
  • greghome
    meh......Lenovo's S400 Ultrabooks are already available at that pricepoint in my area.......
    Bigger meh.......Why get an Ultrabook when the only advantage is that it's 1kg at most lighter
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    $200 tablets have touch-screens, LiPo battery with 8-10h runtime, screen resolution on par with $600 laptops, etc. Not missing a lot other than keyboard, HDD, kludgy x86-64 architecture and Windows to turn those into laptops equivalents. From an engineering point of view, I see very little that can justify paying more than $500 (or even $400) other than expected sales volume being too low to amortize design costs down that low.
    Reply