Ultrabook Sales Falling Ultrashort Discussion

[Andy Patrizio]

Intel's grand proclamation of 40% market share has fallen short by about 39%.

Read the full content of this Article: Ultrabook Sales Falling Ultrashort

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[abaddon4180]

In all honesty, is this really surprising to anyone?

[MSGaldenzi]

Well there are alot of factors to consider here. The general public is becoming more savy and people are reluctant to buy sandy bridge thinking that its older tech. Also, people could be waiting for windows 8 and all of the tablets that seem to be soon to market.

Also andriod/ipad is probably eating into their overall sales. ULtrabooks are not exactly intended to be ones only computer so tablets are surely eating into the sales.

[Pseudorandom]

This site is biased pretty heavily in favor of ultrabooks, but
No ‘Fail’ in Ultrabooks This Quarter « Ultrabook News and the Ultrabook Database

[forumbrah]

i feel like haswell will change this...if what ive been reading is true

..much more functionality for the next generation rather than the gimped/downclocked/under featured/overpriced ultrabooks we've been seeing

[Jerry Jackson]

I agree it's too early to declare the death of the ultrabook. That said, despite the fact that none of the OEM reps are sharing sales numbers, the general body language in most meetings suggests that initials sales of $900+ ultrabooks hasn't been as good as they hoped.

[Althernai]

Intel's grand proclamation of 40% market share has fallen short by about 39%.

I would overlook this for a regular thread here, but if you write an article, don't be sensationalist at the cost of ignoring basic concepts. As you wrote on the linked page but not here, Intel's actual statement about 40% was for the end of 2012, not for July 2012. The Ivy-based ultrabooks have been out for what, a couple of months? So nothing has "fallen short" just yet.

That said, I do think that selling laptops with a price of order $1000 is going to be pretty tough this year. The number of people who would spend that much on a laptop is small to begin with and a lot of them buy some flavor of MacBook.

[Maelwys]

I wonder if part of the issue is that they haven't really filled a needed niche. My experience would suggest that people either want a cheap laptop (<$400) and don't really care about features, or they are enthusiasts and care about power, integrated graphics, screens, etc., Sadly, most ultrabooks only have one thing going for them: weight. I think forumbrah is right - until hardware exists that makes it easy to put enthusiast hardware in an ultrabook at a low price, they won't get close to 40% share.

That said, I don't think they're going away either. Not unless Windows 8 makes a significant leap forward for tablets and they begin to replace all notebooks in the mainstream segment. When Apple releases an iPad with ultrabook power that runs OSX Tabby Panther Puma Kitty or whatever that has full functionality, I'll call the ultrabook reign as done.

Edit: Just to reply to Althernai, that is all technically true, but the gap is pretty extreme, even going into prime PC sales months. 40% of total laptop sales for 2012 is somewhere around 160 million laptops worldwide. Gartner predicts about 11 million units to sell in 2012 and about 17 million to ship in 2013. Keep in mind this only happens by including the MacBook Air, which outsells all ultrabooks by a significant margin.

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-574...swell-in-2013/.

[alegu]

People pay more than $ 1000 for Mac but not for Hp or Acer. If I want to be a VIP, i buy Mac. But Apple win the race, while Hp or others present Air Product, Mac is tablet world now, so I think the big one know are the tablets, thinking in weigh. I´ll pay for a good Window tablet, with i3 or core duo, but always razonable price, couse, remember, if people want to be a VIP, they buy Mac. (sorry my terribe english)

[MitchellO]

"So while the ultrabook vendors are still selling speeds and feeds, Apple sells experiences and gets away with charging three times as much for equivalent hardware, he argues."

Wow, this guys been drinking too much of the anti-Apple koolaid.

Since the Air isn't three times the price of an ultrabook, has notably better build quality than most, and a screen and touchpad that doesn't outright suck, I call BS.