Intel's ultrabooks ready to challenge tablet market

Matt Scherer

USA: In May, at the Computex 2011 show, Intel first laid out the plans for a whole new type of portable computer. The firm trademarked the term “Ultrabook” to include a brand new generation of laptop PCs, which incorporate flash-based SSDs, while boasting ultra-fast start up, high performance, and long battery life (Intel claims that Ultrabooks will have 5 hours of battery life). Intel also designed the computing platform to be as thin as possible while keeping the price low.

The first batch of Ultrabooks retail around $1000 and offer competitive performance to the high-end Apple’ MacBook Air. Most significantly, the new devices will be defined by their use of the “Sandy Bridge" based Core i5 and i7 processors inside instead of the low powered Atom processor that Intel provides to it’s smartphone and netbook customers.

Immediately after the announcement, Intel began lobbying the hundreds of companies that are part of the PC ecosystem to climb on board with its plan. As a result of this push, some of the biggest companies in the PC business have already introduced their own Ultrabooks as of the fourth quarter of 2011; that list includes the Asus UX31, the Lenovo U300s, the Toshiba Z835 and the Acer Aspire S3.

Hewlett-Packard is the most recent player to enter this market, with the HP Folio 13, set to be released on December 7th. Other players, like Fujitsu and Dell are all believed to have models in the works.

Still, this is just a taste of what’s to come. In fact, it is expected that the hot item at CES 2011 will be a flood of new Ultrabooks, with some experts predicting that as many as 30 to 50 new models will be launched at the show in January. It is also predicted that most of these upcoming Ultrabook models will feature Intel’s updated 22nm “Ivy Bridge” CPU chipset, which offers a modest performance boost over the current Sandy Bridge chips, as well as offering USB 3.0 and PCI Express 3.0.

It is unsurprising that Intel is pursuing its own counter to the tablet craze that has rocked the PC market over the past year. Apple’s success with the iPad has damaged profits for Intel, whose x86 processors which were a mainstay of traditional PC designs. Intel is banking heavily on the new products and, if successful, the Ultrabook would mark a return to health for the global PC industry and for Intel’s PC division. Somewhat unsurprisingly then, Intel has forecasted a runaway success for the new product. In fact, Intel estimates that by the end of 2012, around 40 percent of the consumer laptop market segment will be Ultrabooks.

While this target may or may not be possible, it is very likely that success in this market will have major implications for the global PC semiconductor market, as it will be a huge new opportunity for suppliers and could cause major realignments among chipmakers within the notebook market. Specific devices that will get a major boost will be sensors and MEMS, as the new Ultrabooks will most likely incorporate a range of accelerometers, gyroscopes, MEMS microphones, and pressure sensors.

Analog semiconductors, particularly power-management devices, will also be in higher demand, thanks to the even more stringent battery-life requirements brought about by the Ultrabook's slimmer form factor and longer battery life. Finally, other noteworthy categories will be high-end Intel microprocessors, NAND Flash memory, DRAM, and logic ICs.

Source: Databeans, USA.