Intel Corp yesterday said the price of the first Ultrabooks could be higher than US$1,000 when they make their formal debut on the market by December, but added that there would be models selling for less than that in the fourth quarter.
The US chip giant expected the first series of Ultrabooks to sell for more than US$1,000, which contradicted the “less than US$1,000 price tag” it had claimed at the Computex Taipei trade fair in June.
With shipments expected to ramp up next year, which would drive down component costs, price tags would gradually drop over time, Erik Reid, Intel’s general manager of its mobile client platform division, said in Taipei.
Photo: Chen Ping-hung, Taipei Times
PC makers such as Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想), Acer Inc (宏碁) and Hewlett-Packard Co have committed to the rollout of notebooks using the Ultrabook platform.
Ultrabooks, deemed competitors of Apple Inc’s super-slim MacBook Air, aim to marry the performance of a laptop with tablet-like features.
They will be thin, light and powerful, less than 21mm thick and sell at “mainstream” prices, according to Intel’s statement.
The chipmaker is optimistic that more than 40 percent of all consumer notebooks next year will use the Ultrabook platform.
However, Reid said that to achieve that penetration rate “there is a lot of work for Intel.”
Analysts are less convinced that the Ultrabook will gain as high a penetration as Intel claims.
“If Ultrabooks sell for over US$1,000, consumers could opt for better machines within that budget,” said Ryan Lee (李易聰), an analyst with Topology Research Institute (拓墣產業研究所). “Ultrabooks with [the more powerful] Intel Core i5 and i7 chips would have to sell above US$1,300 and that will deter consumers.”
Asustek, which is expected to take the lead by launching the market’s first Ultrabooks next month, said last month that its Ultrabooks would sell for more than US$1,000 unless they use the less expensive, less powerful i3 chip.
The combined cost of the chips, Microsoft Corp’s operating system and solid-state-drive storage already make up half of the Ultrabook’s cost, making it hard to drive down the average selling price, Asustek said.
To give the Ultrabook project a boost, Intel yesterday announced the activation of a US$300 million venture capital fund dedicated to its research and development.
“We expect Asia to take up a big portion of the fund, given it has a pool of original equipment and design manufacturers and this is where many innovations are coming from,” said David Flanagan, managing director of mobile communications and infrastructure at Intel Capital.
The fund will be invested over a span of three to four years in companies building hardware and software technologies for Ultrabook, he said.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has approved a capital budget of US$31.28 billion for production expansion to meet long-term development needs during the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company’s board meeting yesterday approved the capital appropriation plan for purposes such as the installation of advanced technology capacity and fab construction, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. At an earnings conference last month, TSMC forecast that its capital expenditure for this year would be at the higher end of the US$52 billion to US$56 billion range it forecast in January in response to robust demand for 5G, AI and
RSS