Acer Exec Expects Ultrabook Prices to Fall Below $500 by 2013

Posted 03/07/2012 at 9:37pm | by Pulkit Chandna

1

Comment

Print

Ultrabooks haven’t really been flying off store shelves as Intel and its PC vendor friends had hoped. The underwhelming performance of first-generation ultrabooks notwithstanding, they are unlikely to abandon the whole idea anytime soon. An obvious way of making these ultra-thin and -light laptops more inviting to buyers is to lower their prices. While vendors are currently having a hard time keeping ultrabook prices under $1,000, Acer Global President Jianren Weng has already started talking about sub-$500 ultrabooks.

Weng is reported to have talked about the possibility of ultrabooks dropping below $500 in 2013 at the ongoing CeBIT trade show in Germany. Actually, this is merely a reiteration of what he said around three month back. But according to The Verge, which talked to a number of other Acer executives at CeBIT, Weng’s optimism doesn’t seem to reflect the “attitudes on the ground.”

Christoph Pohlmann, a member of Acer’s laptop division, was one of the people our friends at The Verge spoke to. According to the tech blog, Pohlmann seemed skeptical of ultrabook prices dropping below $500. Not only that, but he also revealed that Acer is just breaking even at the current $799 price of its entry-level Aspire S3 ultrabooks.