Taiwan pub steadily criticizes Intel's Ultrabook
One DigiTimes post titled "Ultrabook platform may not benefit ODMs" claims that profits will be less than standard laptop designs, offering an average profit of only "US$5-10 to notebook ODMs, 50% lower than the average of US$10-20 for traditional notebooks." Another article titled "Intel downstream partners request CPU price drop" calls for Intel to reduce the price of its processors so OEMs can sell Ultrabooks for prices below the $1,000 mark. In the article, Ray Chen, president of Compal Electronics, a major ODM, offers up a dire-sounding warning, claiming that if Ultrabooks suffer from weak sales, Apple will take up the slack and profit at Wintel's (Windows-Intel) expense. Apple already has a design analogous to the Ultrabook in the MacBook Air, which has been gaining in popularity. But that's not necessarily a problem for Intel, as Apples uses Intel's Sandy Bridge processors across its MacBook line.A third article titled "Consumers may still have difficulty accepting ultrabook pricing" claims that Ultrabooks "may not earn favor from consumers because average prices are still about 30% higher than those of mainstream notebooks." Intel believes Ultrabooks can take as much as 40 percent of the laptop market in 2012, a lofty goal that demonstrates how serious Intel is about the Ultrabook.To that end, Intel has created a $300 million Ultrabook fund to invest in companies building hardware and software technologies focused on Ultrabooks. A spokesperson for Intel said the company doesn't comment on rumor and speculation, "which is primarily what DigiTimes is in the business of publishing."
