Ultrabooks will capture 40% laptop market in 2012: Intel

SAN FRANCISCO: The Ultrabooks will capture about 40% of the worlwide laptop market, next year, said Mooly Eden, vice president and general manager of the PC Client Group at Intel, world's larget PC chip maker.

"The market share of Ultrabooks will increase more in 2013, when Intel plans to launch its 'Haswell' processor. It will offer more than 20 times, reduction in connected standby power," Eden told reporters here at the Intel Developer Forum. According to analysts here, Intel plans to target 60% of world notebook market and convert it to ultrabook market by 2013.

Toshiba has already launched an Ultrabook, while Acer, Asus, Samsung, Lenovo are scheduled to launch their ultrabooks, priced below $1000 shortly. The Ultrabook devices, scheduled to be available during this year's christmas season.
The Ultrabooks are ultra light and sleek notebooks on Intel's i3 and i5 processors, weigh about 2 pounds and are 15 mm thick giving a strong competition to Macbook Air, at a cheaper price point.

Mr Eden also showcased an ultrabook, which has a touchscreen and can be converted into a tablet. "We are not competing with tablets. People going to buy PCs dont buy tablets instead. The worldwide slowdown in PC sales is due to economic slowdown in some countries, not because of the rise of the tablet," Mr Eden said. Worldwide PC shipments are expected to grow by just 2.8% in 2011, a downgrade from the previous forecast of 4.2%, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC).

Eden shared the stage with Microsoft to show off the Windows 8 operating system working and running several applications on Ultrabook devices.

Intel also turned the spotlight on Thunderbolt technology, which enables streaming of multiple high bandwidth consuming videos all at the same time on a single screen. The Ultrabooks will also have anti-theft technology, which will render a computer useless, if stolen, as it will freeze the operating system.

Eden said that to-date, Intel has shipped 75 million 2nd generation Intel Core processors, making it the fastest-shipping processor in the company's history. It underscores the continued strong demand for personal computing worldwide, as about 1 million computers are sold each day, led by growth in emerging markets such as India and China, he said.