Attractively priced Ultrabooks: manufacturers say not in 2012

A lot of consumers are dreaming of the day. But for manufacturers, ultrabooks at attractive prices won’t be seen right away.

A lot of consumers and analysts are dreaming of attractively prices ultrabooks, or at least devices that are more affordable than the current market prices, later in the year. This become even more so when AMD promised to drag prices down on similar products nicknamed ultrathin's which retail at prices starting from 500-600 dollars.

But the Internet site Digitimes, which has provided information from numerous constructers, states that this won’t yet be a possibility. Even by drawing a few conclusions from here and there, on the chassis for example, prices of ultrabooks won’t drop below 799 dollars this year. We will therefore certainly have to wait for 2013 to see a significant price reduction on such products.

This is explained by the fact that sales of ultrabooks remain too weak today to envisage a significant price reduction. Especially since the manufacturing costs of these machines remains relatively high. Manufacturers have also raised the issue of high integration costs related to SSD storage devices.

We will have to see if AMD will get the results they are looking for, calling on ultrathin's that are attractive, to gain a foothold in the portable computers market and attract users that are not overly willing to spend a few hundred dollars more for the latest hardware in the thinnest possible case.

The model of reference in ultrathin's (credit Engadget; click to enlarge)