Dell, HP, and Lenovo onboard for ultrabooks

Dell, HP, and Lenovo are joining Acer and ASUS in ultrabook launches this fall to head off the MacBook Air, suppliers indicated late Monday. All three were hoping to embrace Intel's concept of a MacBook Air-influenced ultrathin notebook and would start mass production in September. ASUS might be the first to have meaningful production, Digitimes' sources said, with 100,000 of the UX21 due for the entire second half of 2011.

Other companies beyond ASUS were facing problems, the contacts gave out. Acer and Dell were getting poor production rates for their LCDs and might have to delay their systems. Despite claims 1.5 million MacBook Air units might ship in the summer alone and would leave the latecomers with just a fraction of the market. The low price for an ultrathin, the design, and now the high speeds have caught companies off guard that were either tackling the very high end or else focusing on cheaper but much slower crossover notebooks.

Intel has been generic with its target and has mostly been aiming for notebooks under 0.8 inches thick that start at $1,000 or less, but ASUS' UX21 is in many ways intended to look like its Apple counterpart and may have been helped by that trait in reaching the market faster.

By Electronista Staff