“Intel has recently been aggressively cooperating with notebook chassis suppliers hoping to achieve the goal of dropping Ultrabook prices to below US$1,000, and Intel is currently focusing on pushing plastic and fiberglass hybrid chassis for the new machines, according to sources from the PC supply chain,” Aaron Lee and Joseph Tsai report for DigiTimes.
Advertisement: Limited Time: Students, Parents and Faculty save up to $200 on a new Mac.
“The sources pointed out that magnesium-aluminum alloy chassis are still the top choice for Ultrabooks, but limited by capacity and price, most of brand vendors are unable to offer an end price below the targeted US$1,000, and the three already-launched Ultrabooks from Acer, Lenovo and Toshiba are all estimated to have end price higher,” Lee and Tsai report.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s MacBook Air isn’t so easy to knockoff, huh?
“Ultrabooks?” Pfft. There’s only one true family of “ultra” ‘Books: Apple’s.
What happened to the “Apple Tax”? Seems to have disappeared. Suddenly Apple is not only known for design, customer service and quality… but also price!
So Intel should be helping Dell and whatever HP is called at some time in the future? Any other “American” PC companies I missed?
When your main chip supplier which is American is throwing gobs of money towards Taiwanese and Korean competitors of another American company with the fruit logo, the picture that emerges is tilting the playing field sideways and moving the goalposts to enable the other side to score an own goal against you.
I think it reflects badly on Intel since Apple is the only company to have incorporated Thunderbolt technology in copper form in its line of notebooks and desktops whereas the other manufacturers are equivocating by sitting on the fence and adopting USB3.
This shows bad faith on Intel’s part not to mention distorting the market by introducing financial inducements to PC manufacturers to produce an ultra notebook in direct competition with Apple. But the two things that Apple has that none of the other manufacturers have, Mac OS X and buying aluminum blocks in bulk together with CNC milling machines, will ensure that Apple maintains a healthy lead over the others.
I think all of this means Apple’s really developing their own ARM chip for Mac’s. That’s the only logical reasoning behind Intel’s moves. They’re trying to get out of the gate before Apple officially drops them in public.
That’s an interesting point. Why, exactly, is Intel subsidizing Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese and Chinese companies to compete with an American one?
“Why, exactly, is Intel subsidizing Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese and Chinese companies to compete with an American one?”
If an indesive weak Obama can not stop this Anti-American plot by Intel and similar Anti-Amreican plots from Google then Apple and the American people must turn to Chuck Norris!
There used to be a street named after Chuck Norris, but it was changed because nobody crosses Chuck Norris and lives.
Is that meant to be a joke about Obama, or is it merely another piece of brainless, no-content, right-wing vitriol.
It was Reagan who first substantially gutted American manufacturing.
Yep, it’s been that way for many years, but never let that facts get in the way of a bloody good story about the extra money everyone has to pay to own a Mac. I read it every day on the PC sites about the extra you have to pay for a Mac. The wankers just keep on believing the same shit they are given by the 90% of folk who don’t have a Mac. Bloody hell it’s almost a religion to hate the Mac. Imagine what it will be like in 2020 when 30% of the population own Mac’s. Yahoo… my shares will be worth 10k each.
Its lack of effort and price that keeps people buying Plastic pcs.
I was in Walmart a few days ago and a couple were looking at the plastic $399-$499 computers there. I picked one up. You can flex the whole chassis (hold at opp corners and rotate).
With almost no effort you can flex the whole computer section. I am scared to think what that is doing to the pc board inside. (built mega pc boards in career and flexing is just NOT GOOD for them. Breaks circuit traces and makes them intermittent. )
You get MUCH less than you pay for. 🙂
e
Just what I was looking for, a plastic Macbook Air knockoff. And what a deal, I get to pay MORE for it? Yagotabekiddingme.
Why should Intel care that Acer, Lenovo and Toshiba are struggling to compete against Apple? Is a sale to Apple worth less than a sale to the others? One must ask if Apple is getting those CPUs for less than the others would pay, or if those others are paying a fee for using Intel’s reference design while Apple is not paying such a fee. Is Intel afraid that Apple will dominate the market? Obviously they weren’t troubled when Microsoft dominated the market.
The other PC makes buy a whole lot more material in total from Intel than Apple alone could ever do.
Not trying to push them to make better products and increase their sales would be stupid on Intel’s part.
And Intel isn’t stupid.
Why would I buy an “Ultrabook” outside of the Air?
I need to run a lot of software, and WinTel based computers only run a fraction of the software available for the Mac.
Mac=More software than WnTel. Muahahahaha, times are good!
I don’t understand people.. If I want a toyota Cambry hybrid, and the toyota cambry hybrid is the best in the market and the less expensive, why would anyone will seek for a expensive Mazda imitation?
This “Anything but Apple” philosophy is very $tupid. I hate Microsoft but I got myself a Kinect because it is the best console/controller out there.
Intel has reason to be very concerned as Apple’s computer market share grows. Apple is currently a major customer for their chips, but that is likely to change in the near future as Apple is likely to design and manufacture their own chips, the A6 and beyond. When that day comes Intel has suddenly lost a whole lot of sales and Apple has increased its profit margins.
Intel is more concerned about the rise of tablets… devices that do not use Intel CPUs. They are pitting these ultrabooks against tablets to try and sway consumers from switching to ARM based devices. Intel is not concerned with the MacBook Air, but rather the iPad.
You’re both right. Intel knows it has to develop chips that can compete directly with the ARM based chips. It may need sales of chips to more than Apple (especially if Apple reduces it’s purchases of Intel chips) to pay for the development costs. Don’t count Intel out, it can reinvent itself every once in awhile when pushed to the limits.