“The challenge as I see it for UltraBooks is that many of the first ones at launch and perhaps those that follow will be priced more in the premium price range rather than value,” Bajarin writes. “Many of the early UltraBooks we will see will be $699 and above although a few may get lower and many will skew higher as well. What our consumer data from our own research and consumer interviews is telling us is that Apple has about a $250 grace price point. Consumers know Apple’s Macbook Pro and MacBook Air lines are not the cheapest products on the market. For MacBook intenders, any comparable product must be at least $250 less than a comparable MacBook product to fully sway a consumer when price comes into play.”
Bajarin writes, “Earlier in the week AMD launched a very impressive 2nd-Generation A-Series APU, codenamed “Trinity.” Many OEMs have strong relationships with AMD and will most likely use these chips in their lineup of notebooks. So how do OEMs cover their bases by making non-Intel UltraBooks? Well, HP recently launched a new term called SleekBooks. We call this category Ultrathins and we expect many Ultrathins to enter the market well below the price of UltraBooks. And that is what makes this so interesting… If Ultrathins that are very thin, light, and powerful hit the market below the $599 price like we think may happen, it could provide a serious jump start to the notebook category. And at $599 or lower the prices of quality notebooks will be significantly less than an entry level MacBook Air, which may be a key in slowing down Apple’s momentum with Macs.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: They’re still saddled with Windows. Your father’s OS. Only Apple’s Macintosh runs OS X and can also slum it with Windows natively or via fast virtualization until new Mac users realize they don’t need it or want to run it ever again.
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