Ultrabook revolution is in full effect, with thinner, lighter and more powerful notebooks appearing every month. Contrary to similar technology breakthroughs, the prices for such devices remain high and the main reason could be absence of competition for Intel’s Core i5 and Core i7 chips.
Intel originally planned to launch Ultrabook family as a cheaper alternative to Apple’s groundbreaking MacBook Air, but in reality the difference is not so huge. Ultrabooks still regularly go for over $1000 (or even £1000 in UK stores) and that is not exactly affordable for the average consumer. With no real competitors in the portable-PC chip manufacturing business, Intel has few reasons to even consider dropping the prices of its premium products. All of that could change if AMD makes a serious push with a new generation of high-powered, low-cost processors.
A strong candidate for this role could be AMD Trinity, a performance-oriented APU (Accelerated Processing Unit) based on the updated version of Bulldozer architecture. This chip was already used to construct a notebook in cooperation with Compal, with the retail price around $900. AMD claims that Trinity chips will feature superb integrated graphics and extended battery life, which could be essential for challenging Intel’s monopoly in the Ultrabook PC segment.
With a little luck, we could hope for affordable thin computers in the near future. They won’t be called Ultrabooks (Intel patented that name) but they could be just as fast and stylish.
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