Ultrabook Pricing Unlikely to Reach $599-699 Range till 2013
 

Affordable Ultrabooks, which strike a cost-benefit sweet-spot when priced in the US $599-699 range are unlikely to become a reality till 2013, sources among notebook vendors told DigiTimes. The same sources also note that pricing will be the key to driving demand for Ultrabooks. They attribute this to high production costs, which will likely persist till next year.

Components such as SSDs, which are key to keeping these devices ultra-slim, cost 10-times as much as HDDs, custom-design ultra-thin display panels, and aluminum unibody chassis are still quite expensive, even as major ODMs are ramping up infrastructure to mass-produce some of these components. Even with the most aggressive cost-cutting, the cheapest Ultrabooks available in 2012 will cost US $799.

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