Intel: 2012 will be year of the Ultrabook

While admitting that it has yet to make significant progress in mobile phones and tablet PCs, chipmaker Intel is betting that its Ultrabook platform will become big in 2012.  

Intel Philippines country manager Ricky Banaag  

Speaking during its 2011 yearender press briefing, Intel Philippines country manager Ricky Banaag said the Ultrabook presents an entirely new proposition for consumers because of its processing power, light weight, and sleek form factor.  

Banaag said PC manufacturers have already adopted the new product category as he pointed to the row of Ultrabooks displayed during the press event held this week.  

The executive said Ultrabooks, as a new product segment, is not meant to replace mini-notebooks or netbooks whose popularity has waned in last couple of years.  

He said netbooks are still selling well in developing countries and that Ultrabooks would give consumers an additional option for their computing needs.  

Four companies – Acer, Asus, Lenovo, and Toshiba – have announced and some are already shipping Ultrabook products, with more expected in 2012 from additional manufacturers.  

Intel said it expects Ultrabooks to be as transformational to mobile computing as Intel Centrino Mobile technology was when it helped popularize WiFi-enabled laptops.  

The company said Ultrabook devices will arrive in three phases over the next three years, each adding more must-have features like touch, longer battery life and in thinner designs and styles, ultimately delivering the most complete and satisfying computing experience.  

The semicon giant also reported that it is making “significant” progress in its mobile portfolio as it noted that it is collaborating with Google to enable and optimize future releases of the Android platform for Intel’s family of low- power Intel Atom processors.  

The joint effort is designed to speed time-to-market of Intel technology-based smartphones running the Android platform. Medfield, a platform designed to extend the performance benefits of Intel x86 architecture into a low-power solutions for the smartphone and tablet market segments, is expected to be in production later this year with first designs scheduled to begin appearing in the first half of 2012.  

It remains to be seen, however, if Intel can still overhaul the lead of its competitors in the mobile chip space, with top dog Qualcomm expected to release a quad-core mobile chip by this year. — Newsbytes.ph