By this time next year, we expect the mobile market will be inundated with Ultrabook models from manufacturers far and wide. But for now, Ultrabooks are fairly few and far between, with only a handful of notebook makers already on board. You can add LG Electronics to the list, a surprise entry who hasn't made much chatter in regard to this new class of notebook, but just unveiled its new X-Note Z330 series nonetheless.
So, Ultrabooks haven’t exactly been lighting the sales charts on fire. Theoretically, 2012 is supposed to be the year sales take off. Some critics say that can only happen if pricing comes down, but Ultrabook suppliers say it’s hard to shave off more cash because of high manufacturing costs. Well, that might be changing soon. Today, Acer president Jim Wong predicted that Ultrabooks should see $100 to $200 price cuts by midway through 2012. Heck, if that isn’t low enough for you, he thinks Ultrabooks should clock in as low as $500 by 2013.
Intel was 
It takes a collective effort from component makers to realize Intel's vision of what an Ultrabook should look like, and Samsung is doing its part to keep the form factor slim and sleek. The storage maker just kicked off volume production of its Mini-Serial ATA (mSATA) solid state drives (SSDs) designed for all kinds of ultra-slim notebooks, and in particular Ultrabooks.
Despite affordability being an integral part of Intel’s ultrabook vision, PC vendors are finding it difficult to honor the $1,000 price cap stipulated by the chip maker. If it’s the price that’s keeping you from buying your first ultrabook, you might not have to wait all that long now for a dip in ultrabook prices. Hit the jump for more.
The “world’s lightest 13-inch laptop” is here in the form of the Toshiba Portege Z830 Ultrabook, which is available now from Toshiba.com in four models starting at $879. However, only one of them is configurable and all others can only be bought as is. Hit the jump for more.
Global Ultrabook shipments are expected to soar over the next several years, going from less than 1 million units in 2011 to 136.5 million units in 2015, market research firm IHS iSuppli says. The firm believes this "massive level of growth will have major repercussions for the global electronics supply chain" and will shake up various semiconductor markets, in particular having a positive impact for sensors and power and analog semiconductors, but will reduce demand for upgrade memory modules.
Intel's Ultrabook concept is slow getting off its feet. Pricing is mostly to blame, and a big part of why Ultrabooks are so comparatively expensive is because the CPUs are pricey. Maybe Intel's Haswell architecture will change that. At the very least, Haswell, which is Intel's catch-all codename for both its mobile and desktop Shark Bay platform (the successor to Ivy Bridge) is a brand new core ("tock," as Intel calls it), and the version for Ultrabooks will be fairly close to a System-on-Chip (SoC) design.
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.
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