NPD’s Steve Baker has a good post – even though it lacks the bite of much hard data. Baker provides a reasonably sound estimate, that ultrabooks will represent 40-50 percent of the laptop market over $500 which equates to roughly 15 percent of the overall laptop market. For the month of September, Baker reported average sales prices for Ultrabooks “fell to $805, still far above the overall Windows ASP of $471 but much more in line than ASPs over $900.”
Ultrabooks are certainly going to be a big story at the 2013 CES. Recently I wrote about the huge amount of hardware innovation being driven by the launch of Windows 8 and how I expect this to continue at CES. There will be an especially strong push around hybrid and convertible tablets/laptops/ultrabooks. While ultrabooks might only represent 15-20 percent of the laptop market by the end of 2013, the category will certainly leave an imprint on how the entire category of notebooks and laptops evolves over the next year.
I see ultrabooks impacting the rest of the computer category in a couple of ways. First, ultrabooks will keep prices for non-ultrabook laptops low. Secondly, as the high-end of the computer category ultrabooks will be the vehicle by which innovation is pushed through the mobile computing category. I expect to see features like touch screens and hybrids/convertibles roll through the ultrabook category first.
