Asus, Acer Cut Ultrabook Orders, is the Form Factor Doomed?

Posted 11/10/2011 at 3:09pm | by Paul Lilly

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Asus and Acer, the same two companies largely responsible for the success of the netbook form factor and, by association, Intel's Atom platform, are having a hard time selling Intel's Ultrabook concept to the masses. To wit, both companies recently reduced their Ultrabook orders by as much as 40 percent simply because initial sales numbers weren't looking all that hot.

According to DigiTimes, the two companies had ordered as many as 300,000 Ultrabook units from upstream ODMs, but after being met with a lukewarm reception, those orders were slashed to 150,000 to 180,000 units only. That doesn't bode well for Intel's Ultrabook concept, though it's still early in the game and prices are still higher than where Intel would like them to be.

And make no mistake, this is largely an issue of price. Depending on the specific model, you're not likely to score a Zenbook by Asus for under $1,050, and that's with only a 128GB SSD and 4GB of memory. It's a little easier to find an Aspire S3 by Acer for under $1,000, which is where Intel envisions Ultrabooks sitting on the price scale.

Image Credit: Asus