Analysts slash Ultrabook sales estimate by over 50%
Global 'meh' over overpriced laptops
Analyst house IHS iSuppli has slashed its forecast for Ultrabook sales by more than half for this year, and the outlook for 2013 could hardly be described as rosy, as well.
Earlier in the year, iSuppli predicted that 22 million of the svelte laptops would ship by the end of 2012, but it's now cut that forecast to 10.3 million. It's hedging its bets even further by saying the platform will need a lot of sales in the last quarter to meet even that new target. iSuppli's Ultrabook sales estimate for 2013 has also fallen, from 61 to 44 million units.
"So far, the PC industry has failed to create the kind of buzz and excitement among consumers that is required to propel ultrabooks into the mainstream," said Craig Stice, senior principal analyst for compute platforms at IHS in an emailed statement.
"This is especially a problem amid all the hype surrounding media tablets and smartphones," he writes. "When combined with other factors, including prohibitively high pricing, this means that ultrabook sales will not meet expectations in 2012."
Quite simply the platform is overpriced, undersold, and no one – outside of Intel – appears very excited about it. iSuppli's latest figures look very optimistic, with Q4 sales needing to outpace all Ultrabook sales for the rest of the year combined to make the reduced targets. The analyst's figures for 2013 look even more pie-in-the-sky to this El Reg hack.
Even the revised figures look a little optimistic
The basic problem for Ultrabooks at the moment is one of price, Stice explained. Intel's original vision for the platform was for a price point of around $600, but even with the $300m in support and subsidies that Chipzilla is pushing out to manufacturers, prices are much closer to a grand – and at that price, customers aren't biting.
Sure, Apple has the high-end of the laptop market paying much more than that, but its customer base is used to paying top dollar, whereas PC users are more thifty. At the same time, smartphones are getting more powerful and tablets are appealing to those that want portability without having to lug around an entire laptop.
"With the economy languishing, ultrabook sellers may have trouble finding buyers at the current pricing," Stice said, "especially with fierce competition from new mobile computing gadgets such as the iPhone 5, Kindle Fire HD and forthcoming Microsoft Surface."
As El Reg pointed out back in July, Intel is going to take a beating on Ultrabooks for quite some time. As things stand, manufacturers aren't that keen on the lower margins they'll be getting, SSD drive prices remain higher than they might have been expected to be thanks to the floods in the Far East, and the economy remains in the doldrums.
In the meantime, Microsoft has its Surface platform, there are new iPads, and Android and Windows RT fondleslabs are coming onto the market. As of today, Ultrabook is looking suspiciously close to Itanium in the history of great Intel cock-ups. ®
COMMENTS
Re: Well who would have thought it?
Pretty much I agree with you. One small correction I would make is when you say OEMs were cruising on the back of Windows. Let's just say they were slowly marching on foot at the back of Windows wagon. Microsoft never allowed them to breathe properly or to step out of the line. As for accepting lower margins, I don't think they can get much lower than they are now, which is razor-thin. Anyway they stopped innovating and abandoned the idea of quality for their products a long time ago so that's they are in this position now.
All Ultrabooks seem to fail.
Every review for an ultrabook starts off pretty good, they look nice etc. then they fail due to one or two bizarre penny pinching corners cut, which on a £800+ machine just seems really stupid.
Such as -
Low res, cheap TN screen.
No USB3.0
Only 4GB of ram.
Intel only graphics.
Stupidly large 5400rpm HDD
Stupidly small SSD
Doesnt anyone in the Ultrabook design dept. sit down and think..."Is that really the best choice at that price?"
Meh from me for sure. For the price of an ultrabook, I can have at least 2 decent-specced laptops with more ports and a DVD writer. Or one of them; an SSD and quite a lot of change.
Well who would have thought it?
""So far, the PC industry has failed to create the kind of buzz and excitement among consumers that is required to propel ultrabooks into the mainstream" said Craig Stice, senior principal analyst".
Well one can certainly see why he is a senior principal analyst (yes, that was irony :)). Indeed, he is a veritable font of wisdom.
"When combined with other factors, including prohibitively high pricing, this means that ultrabook sales will not meet expectations in 2012."
Never mind of course the very mediocre specs that you get for the money. RegHardware's review of the HP Spectre XT for example - magisterially dismissed by the first poster with "1366x768.... next...".
Yet more wisdom.
"especially with fierce competition from new mobile computing gadgets such as the iPhone 5, Kindle Fire HD and forthcoming Microsoft Surface."
The only relevant device here in his list, if we are talking high-end computers (not phones), is the Win 8 Pro version of the "Surface". We note the fact that (according to all the reports at least) it has fine build quality, pretty highly specced and has a high-res screen. If however we look at the various tablet announcements from the OEMs it is not obvious to me that they are going to do any different with their tablet offerings than they have with their ultra-books. Over-priced, underspecced, and soon to be over here - no doubt raising the same kind of yawn that their "thinnies" have been raising. Common factor IMO? The OEMs won't contribute shit to growing a market. They've had two decades or more cruising on the back of Windows doing bugger all other than "banging out boxes" and they see no reason to change their habits now - and absolutely no reason to accept lower margins at the outset to establish a market. I am not surprised that Redmond decided to build "benchmarks" themselves with the two versions of the Surface, they must have strongly suspected what they and we are going to see on the market this Autumn.
Boggles Indeed
You mean that finally sheep have stopped buying overpriced shite just because it's thin? See while that's good news that so many people are finally wising up to the fact that a grand for a mediocre laptop is an utter waste of cash, but it doesn't explain why Apple fanbois are still willing to part with even more just because their laptop has a glowing half-eaten apple stuck on the lid. Maybe that's it.. maybe the wintel crowd need to put a half-eaten glowing banana on the back, install a fancy version of unix with a gui interface and call the OS Intel OS 11.2 Feral Goat.
