Ultrabook Sales Not All That Ultra

Championed by Intel, the ultrabook concept was supposed to stop the rot in the netbook market. But early sales suggest it’s doing little more than slowing the inevitable.

Acer and Asustek had each expected to sell between 200,000 and 300,000 ultrabooks by the end of the year. Sadly, the demand to support those numbers just doesn’t seem to be there. Channel sources tell DigiTimes that the two companies are currently on track to ship only 100,000 ultrabooks or so each in 2011.

The reason: “Unclear market demand.”

Of course, it’s still quite early in the ultrabook timeline. The concept won’t even support all of Intel’s requirements for it for at least another year. So it’s conceivable that second-generation devices may be quite a bit more popular than their predecessors. Indeed, some expect the ultrabook to account for 10 percent of the entire notebook market by spring of 2012.