Ultrabook sales off to a disappointing start, thanks to high prices

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Intel has invested a lot of money into launching the new Ultrabook laptop platform, hailing the ultra-thin form factor as the future of notebooks. While that still may be the case down the line, initial signs are that Ultrabooks aren’t setting the world on fire, sales-wise.

According to DigiTimes, two of the main Ultrabook vendors — Acer and Asus — are expected to ship fewer than half the target number of systems for the fourth quarter that they expected: around 100,000 instead of 200,000 or 300,000 units.

The site’s sources claim that the first Ultrabooks available are priced too high to excite consumer demand. While Acer’s Aspire S3 (pictured) costs $899, other Ultrabooks cost as much or more than the lowest-priced MacBook Air ($999), the obvious inspiration for the Ultrabook platform. Even priced at $899, these laptops may be too costly for consumers who will settle for a $500 notebook instead, especially as the economy continues to sputter.

As Intel rolls out Ivy Bridge and Microsoft rolls out Windows 8, Ultrabooks may become more attractive to buyers, DigiTimes points out, especially if vendors can continue to find ways to lower the price tag for the new laptops. Thus far, however, those buyers haven’t responded to the new platform in the way Intel may have hoped.

Have you purchased an Ultrabook yet? Let us know your thoughts in the Talkback section.

Sean Portnoy is a freelance technology journalist.

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Poor sales of Chromebooks won't stop Google from promoting Chrome OS

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@ yphilogene

Barriers to entry in the PC and mobile phone ecosystems are much, much lower than barriers to entry in web search. The continued existence of free operating systems like Linux, in many cases without subsidies (e.g. from hardware or services firms), is very strong evidence of this. If you don't like Windows, you can install Linux or buy a Mac. If you don't like Mac OS, you can install Linux or Windows. If you don't like iOS, you can install Linux or buy an Android/Windows phone.

If you're an advertiser (Google's actual customers) and you don't like Google, what can you do? In the US, maybe you can advertise via Bing, but you'll immediately reduce your audience from about 70 per cent to about 30 per cent of the potential market. In most of Europe, Bing is still a 'beta' (including in Germany, which is the largest market in Europe), with insignificant market share, and Google effectively control the entire web search market.

The tricky thing is that advertisers won't switch until audiences switch. Without advertisers (customers), there's no revenue. Without revenue, the enormous costs of building and maintaining a search infrastructure lead to enormous losses. As a result, only firms with very deep pockets can even think about competing. This isn't like PCs (or in some cases even mobile phones) where you can offer cheap or even free alternatives, and customers can switch to them for free.

One of the cleverest tricks Google have managed to pull to keep away the competition authorities has been to claim that their customers are web search users, who can switch to a competitor with a click of the mouse. In fact, Google's customers are advertisers, who are far more locked into Google's web search platform than customers of Microsoft, Apple or Intel have ever been locked into any of their respective platforms -- especially here in Europe, where switching from Google to anything else would mean an advertiser would lose perhaps 95-99 per cent of the audience.

Google's trick has worked so far, but it's transparent to anyone who understand the technology and has studied the market. I think the competition authorities will catch on eventually. When they do, Google may be in very serious trouble.

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