A year on, Ultrabooks are a worse disaster than most expected

[pelov]

Intel did say they discovered cheaper yet higher quality materials for ultrabooks and will share it with their partners.

The OEMs essentially said "No way." Intel attempted to introduce a cheaper yet durable plastic that would bring the BoM down, easing up on margins and prices. OEMs flat out declined because they believed that using plastic would be perceived by the public as a lower quality product and affect sales negatively.

 

[kelco]

The OEMs essentially said "No way." Intel attempted to introduce a cheaper yet durable plastic that would bring the BoM down, easing up on margins and prices. OEMs flat out declined because they believed that using plastic would be perceived by the public as a lower quality product and affect sales negatively.

I know right, the best feature of my zenbook is that it doubles as a weapon. I could chop someone in the neck with this awesome metal chassis...

And I could do it while its on, because theres no spinning drive to crash from the G's of the impact. *Chops bad guy mugger in the neck* oh wait I need to compute this spreadsheet, *click*.

 

[Idontcare]

The OEMs essentially said "No way." Intel attempted to introduce a cheaper yet durable plastic that would bring the BoM down, easing up on margins and prices. OEMs flat out declined because they believed that using plastic would be perceived by the public as a lower quality product and affect sales negatively.

It is the Walmart mentality.

Walmart shows up at their supplier's HQ and says "we are here to help you manage your costs". Which is a godsend, or at least it is accepted as being such.

Then when Walmart is done gutting all the business relationships that the supplier built with its suppliers, the relationships that made it successful enough in the first place to have risen enough such that they gained Walmart's attention in the first place, then Walmart turns to the same management and says "you are welcome, and now that your cost structure has been substantially lowered let us now turn our collective attention towards lowering Walmart's cost structure...all your gross margins are belong to us."

And that is basically the name of the game in retail merchandising, convincing the supplier chain to add value but to not expect gross margins for themselves in return. They are to turn over their added value to their new overlords - be it Walmart or Apple or Intel - and just live out their business lives as a non-profit entity while funneling all the profits for the industry towards the top one or two master businesses.

Intel is doing to the ultrabook OEMs what it has watched every business that outsources their production lines do. Leave them with enough money to pay the mortgage and the power bill, entice them with the hope of securing the next contract and be "in" the next product wave, and bask in the juicy gross margins that are amassed and hoarded in the name of the shareholder.

Walmart and Apple did alright, for themselves. Intel will too. The OEMs are right to be wary, but it won't help them in the end.

 

[pelov]

I'm not sure that Intel has been buying any large warehouses or opening up any large manufacturing plants in China yet I think OEMs will be okay for a while. But you're right, the margins they're currently operating at for Ultrabooks is too slim to be sustainable long term, and the current prices are far too high so there's no hope in having high volume supplement the small amount of money made per product. Cutting estimates while maintaining low margins is a recipe for disaster, and not just for the OEMs. Intel has a lot at stake with Ultrabooks as well.

That's only one of the reasons why they're failing in the consumer space, among a variety of others I've already gone through. Though the strain with the OEMs is perhaps the biggest.

Either way, something needs to change. They need something. Either sell them at lower prices by adjusting the BoM and the amount spent on the processor (the ULV's are expensive as hell and carry typical Intel margins), or give the Ultrabooks a really great feature that makes them worth the higher cost. Opting to mimic MacBook Airs won't make anyone any money other than Apple.

Playing the margins game works fine against AMD, where the competition is so far behind that you can make an absolute killing on every chip sold. The issue Ultrabooks face is that competition comes from Apple, AMD, ARM and the entire tablet space as well. I guess you can throw Microsoft into this boat as well.

I guess a decrease in chip price might be the best bet as far as increasing sales. Coupled with standardization of Li-Polymer batteries and the new mSATA defined format, prices would dip by a good amount. Waiting for Intel to decrease the prices on their chips, even when faced with stiff competition, is about as unlikely as winning the lottery.

 

[IntelUser2000]

I think the difference in normal use between ULV ans Standard is only around 1-2W, because comparing my two laptops the difference was that the Dell consumes 11W and the Lenovo 12W when web browsing/email.

Axel, you compared ULV Arrandale vs SV Sandy Bridge. Sandy Bridge improves idle power quite nicely over Arrandale.

Let's compare ULV to ULV:

Arrandale-
C1E: 12W
C3: 5.0W
C6: 2.6W

Sandy Bridge-
C1E: 5.8W
C3: 2.3W
C6: 2.2W

What about SV Sand Bridge?

SV Sandy Bridge-
C1E: 8.8W
C3: 3.1W
C6: 2.95W

Those are the idle states, meaning the CPU only power use. You can see Sandy Bridge significantly improves such aspects.

Your numbers on the first page of the thread supports this. The bigger screen and more power hungry peripherals negate the idle power difference between the two, and despite that, the ULV is still higher!

Ivy Bridge doesn't improve in any power states compared to Sandy Bridge, but still a big reduction from Arrandale.

From Anandtech's UX31A review, it gets 9.5 hours at idle with 50WHr battery. That equates to 6.3W. Web browsing tests get 7.5W use, not too shabby. The issue is of course Ultrabooks in general have smaller battery capacities, even though the components may be more efficient.

 

[magomago]

Tablets are still pretty much unusable for any real work. With a keyboard dock their price jumps by $100-150, and they're not nearly as good for typing on as laptop, nor are productivity apps nearly as fully featured.

What I really wish Intel would've done is lower the idle power consumption of the platform. Even if this may seem unreal, the ULV and Standard voltage processors use about the same amount of power on idle and normal use, and in some cases the standard voltage system may even use less. The problem is, since Ultrabooks are so thin, they have small batteries. That means they only get about 6-7 hours of battery life.

I have a kill-a-watt, and some weeks ago I did some tests regarding power consumption:

Idle:

• 14" laptop with Core i5-2410M (standard voltage)=8-9W.
• 11.6" ultra-portable with i3-330UM (ultra low voltage)=9-10W.

Full load (CPU + IGP):

• 14" laptop with Core i5-2410M=47W.
• 11.6"ultra-portable with i3-330UM= 25W.

I know this isn't directly comparable because one is based on Sandy Bridge and the other on Nehalem, but you get a good idea. The new 11.6" Ultrabooks would use the same power as the 14" laptop, or maybe a watt less. At idle there's pretty much no difference between an ULV and standard voltage processor, which is why Ultrabooks don't have that great battery life. When you're using your system normally it spends most of its time idle, and that's where the processors are the closest on power consumption.

Kill a watt isn't accurate at the low end.

Simple proof form our own forum:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=137169

Killawatt said dvd player was using about 5 watts, fluke 2.64 watts.

Of course it isn't bad, but you are trying to split a couple of watts here.

 

[biostud]

My GF just bought a samsung series 5 ultra 530u3c, ivy bridge 13.3 with 24Gb ssd cache and 500Gb hdd, matte screen and really slim. In US it's around $750, and I think it seems like a very good ultrabook for the price.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

My GF just bought a samsung series 5 ultra 530u3c, ivy bridge 13.3 with 24Gb ssd cache and 500Gb hdd, matte screen and really slim. In US it's around $750, and I think it seems like a very good ultrabook for the price.

youre a lucky man to have a chick with an ultrabook dood

 

[happysmiles]

youre a lucky man to have a chick with an ultrabook dood

better put a ring on it!



But back on topic, Ultrabooks will get cheaper because eventually even Intel will feel the sting from many outside influences.
Vote with your dollar people, that's the only way that things will change.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Ultrabooks will get cheaper when standarlization improves and volume goes up.