Ultrabook Sales Falling Ultrashort Discussion

Intel's grand proclamation of 40% market share has fallen short by about 39%.

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In all honesty, is this really surprising to anyone?

 

Well there are alot of factors to consider here. The general public is becoming more savy and people are reluctant to buy sandy bridge thinking that its older tech. Also, people could be waiting for windows 8 and all of the tablets that seem to be soon to market.

Also andriod/ipad is probably eating into their overall sales. ULtrabooks are not exactly intended to be ones only computer so tablets are surely eating into the sales.

 

This site is biased pretty heavily in favor of ultrabooks, but
No ‘Fail’ in Ultrabooks This Quarter « Ultrabook News and the Ultrabook Database

 

i feel like haswell will change this...if what ive been reading is true

..much more functionality for the next generation rather than the gimped/downclocked/under featured/overpriced ultrabooks we've been seeing

 

I agree it's too early to declare the death of the ultrabook. That said, despite the fact that none of the OEM reps are sharing sales numbers, the general body language in most meetings suggests that initials sales of $900+ ultrabooks hasn't been as good as they hoped.

 

I would overlook this for a regular thread here, but if you write an article, don't be sensationalist at the cost of ignoring basic concepts. As you wrote on the linked page but not here, Intel's actual statement about 40% was for the end of 2012, not for July 2012. The Ivy-based ultrabooks have been out for what, a couple of months? So nothing has "fallen short" just yet.

That said, I do think that selling laptops with a price of order $1000 is going to be pretty tough this year. The number of people who would spend that much on a laptop is small to begin with and a lot of them buy some flavor of MacBook.

 

I wonder if part of the issue is that they haven't really filled a needed niche. My experience would suggest that people either want a cheap laptop (<$400) and don't really care about features, or they are enthusiasts and care about power, integrated graphics, screens, etc., Sadly, most ultrabooks only have one thing going for them: weight. I think forumbrah is right - until hardware exists that makes it easy to put enthusiast hardware in an ultrabook at a low price, they won't get close to 40% share.

That said, I don't think they're going away either. Not unless Windows 8 makes a significant leap forward for tablets and they begin to replace all notebooks in the mainstream segment. When Apple releases an iPad with ultrabook power that runs OSX Tabby Panther Puma Kitty or whatever that has full functionality, I'll call the ultrabook reign as done.

Edit: Just to reply to Althernai, that is all technically true, but the gap is pretty extreme, even going into prime PC sales months. 40% of total laptop sales for 2012 is somewhere around 160 million laptops worldwide. Gartner predicts about 11 million units to sell in 2012 and about 17 million to ship in 2013. Keep in mind this only happens by including the MacBook Air, which outsells all ultrabooks by a significant margin.

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57474006-92/both-ultrabook-macbook-air-shipments-to-swell-in-2013/.

 

People pay more than $ 1000 for Mac but not for Hp or Acer. If I want to be a VIP, i buy Mac. But Apple win the race, while Hp or others present Air Product, Mac is tablet world now, so I think the big one know are the tablets, thinking in weigh. I´ll pay for a good Window tablet, with i3 or core duo, but always razonable price, couse, remember, if people want to be a VIP, they buy Mac. (sorry my terribe english)

 

"So while the ultrabook vendors are still selling speeds and feeds, Apple sells experiences and gets away with charging three times as much for equivalent hardware, he argues."

Wow, this guys been drinking too much of the anti-Apple koolaid.

Since the Air isn't three times the price of an ultrabook, has notably better build quality than most, and a screen and touchpad that doesn't outright suck, I call BS.

 

I think there was just a huge disconnect in thoughtline at intel.

Ultrabooks compete in a very competitive market. First of all they were never meant to be as powerful as laptops and they never were or will be. Power requires heat dissipation and that only happens with size and weight. There is no magic CPU that breaks this trend. So people who buy ultrabooks are accepting they will not be recieving a high powered device. That puts them in a a niche market. And the fact that ultrabooks command more money makes it even harder to justify.

I also agree with comments about class, lets be honest stereotypes exist and people who buy ultrabooks are often more concerned with how they look than anything else. These days those types of people are buying macs. Nothing you can do about that as a PC manufacturer.

You have netbooks, tablets, and the fact that many laptops have just become much lighter to contend with. I never saw the point of ultra books as a useful device and I still do not. That leaves them as a segement of the market not the majority of it. There is nothing wrong with that though so I dont know why people worry. Every company should have 1 ultra book in its lineup, but they dont need to get carried away. Just the same as they should have a netbook.

 

I think Apple set the bar with the Air, an uber thin notebook with good battery life and a slick design. No PC Ultrabook I've seen matches that combo. They're either cheap junk like Acers or Toshiba. On the other end you've got some higher end Ultrabooks from the likes of Samsung and Asus, but they're either more expensive, can't match the battery life, have sub par touch pads/keyboards or overheat. Sometimes it's good to be first.

 

I think that is one of the most honest and balanced pro Apple comments I've ever seen here, and from what little I have seen of the Air and ultrabooks, I have to agree. This is one area where I think Apple does lead.

 

Some of the newer gens are getting awfully close though. I had an XPS13 for a little while and it was as solid as a macbook 13 and had a smaller footprint. The newer asus models with 1080p screens are putting some excitement in the race. 1080p on 11' may be overkill, but I'd love to get my hands on that model, Asus has the apple beat there. Competition leads to innovation, so good things are sure to come.

 

I wonder if my situation is typical and explains part of the quandry: I have been a laptop user for all my life, having worked for a US firm that provided a PC. Laptop served both for desktop work and for travel. When I retired 3 years ago, I thought to buy a new PC but put if off, using an old one because I didn't need to do much anymore other then email and web browsing. Then I was given an ipod and loved it for 1/ music 2/ podcasts and 3/ some brief email. Then I saw someone using an ipad with attached Zagg keyboard. I bought one of those duos, and "have never looked back." Ipad does 80% of what I need and I have my old PC as backup.
My question: what is involved in "marrying" and ipad with a macbook? using apps, touchscreen, camera, sim card, Istore for movie rentals, but with computer capability? Could be either OSX or windows based, I suppose. THAT would be my ideal "ultrabook"? I wonder if my experience is common to others? How dificult is this "marriage"?

 

I liked the XPS13 too. At least Dell went their own way and didn't create an Air clone, but the highly reflective screen with middle of the road quality is probably enough to doom it. That along with the noisy fan and the fact it lacks a card read. I mean, c'mon it's 2012.

 

The problem with the tablets of today is software. I'm running an ICS tablet (Mediapad 7) and as much as I like it could never replace my computer. And it's the same with any tablet from Apple as well. Any advanced task is a no-go from the start. And sometimes tablets seem to stumble on even the most basic of tasks.

 

The Air is a good notebook, but I don't think that's the reason why the Air succeeds when ultrabooks fail. It's because the Air exists in more of a vacuum than ultrabooks do.

If you are looking for a Windows ultraportable, there are a lot of very portable machines that don't make the ridiculous compromises that ultrabooks make. You can get a Windows ultraportable with a standard voltage CPU that is too powerful to fit in ultrabooks, more storage capacity both in the form of larger SSD's that won't fit in the mSATA form factor and HDD's, better but thicker keyboards, and larger batteries which translate to longer battery lives, you can even get an optical disk drive. There is nothing forcing you to accept the compromises that ultrabooks make because there are good ultraportables that don't make them.

This isn't true for Apple notebooks. If you want an ultraportable that runs OS X without hacking, you have two options, the MBA11, and the MBA13. There is no Thinkpad X230 or Portege R930 for those that want portability, but not counterproductive levels of thinness. You have to either compromise functionality and buy an MBA, or compromise portability and buy an MBP. If Apple made a MacBook equivalent of an X230 or other more full featured ultraportable, I bet the Air would sell just as bad as the next ultrabook.

Unless Intel somehow gets rid of the more reasonable non ultrabook ultraportables, or consumer wants changes drastically, ultrabooks are pretty much doomed to be a very niche products.

 

mSATA drives are still overpriced compared to SSD versions. They have less hardware, and no need for a shell enclosure, so theoretically they should be less expensive than a standard SSD of the same size. Until more manufacturers start making mSATA drives with large capacities at comparative prices I don't think they'll take off. Apple has sidestepped this issue with the air by including its own proprietary parts.

 

The problem with ultrabook is if going thin and light is good enough or not. I mean I still need to get a backpack if I want to bring a 15" 2 inch thick or 15" .01inch thick laptop. It will take as much time and space to pull it out and use it on the transit and when you put them on a desk, I will immediately throw the ultrabook away. Paying 500 extra(pretty much a high end tablet) for 2lb less and less power does not fit in the bill for most people.

 

I'm an IT Pro and manages over 700 laptops here at financial firm. We don't buy ultrabooks period. We have Lenovo X220, T420s, and Macbook Pro 13s and some execs gets Macbook Air 13 by request and that's the only ultrabook class.

We looked at Ultrabooks and don't think it's a fit for our business users, they lack in power, durability is a question, and lack of expandability such as docking stations are important for us. Which is why the X220 is the only one that fits our requirement but they ain't cheap for the average consumer.

That's the main thing with ultrabooks is they aren't meant for everyone, so a 40% marketshare is way too optimistic imo. 10% is actually quite good, personally I wouldn't mind having one but I need one with decent discrete graphics power and that won't happen until after Ivy bridge.

Another thing worth noting is that we have a growing class of users that uses tablets instead of notebooks and they swear by them. Most of these business users just need a simple email/web/light typing device and tablets fit the bill. I can see Win8 tablets get 10% of marketshare easily by middle of next year outpacing ultrabooks sales growth.

 

I also cannot think of buying a ultrabook for myself unless it comes with a full voltage cpu. Sony Z seems to be a good one but it's keyboard is lousy and the build quality is questionable. Hopefully T430u will come with full voltage cpu but I won't bet on that.

 

If it comes with a full voltage CPU then it isn't an ultrabook.

 

I think Windows 8 and Windows RT tablets with detachable keyboards (either of the Microsoft Surface variety or of the Asus Transformer variety) are going to gut the sales of more traditional ultrabooks. People who want more power will get a more powerful laptop. For people who want extreme portability, a convertible tablet seems like such a better investment than an ultrabook.

 

It's wrong to believe that ultrabooks won't sell when a company with a fruity name has shifted millions in this format. I would consider pricing, more than performance, to be a major disincentive to many potential purchasers and, while the price premium relative to normal notebooks may shrink, it is unlikely to disappear. The lower voltage CPUs are a match for mainstream CPUs of a couple of years ago and, for most users, those CPUs are more than fast enough. Personally, I'm more than willing to give up a little performance in return for notebook that takes up so little space in the baggage and I can productively work at all day.

John