First-tier notebook brand vendors Acer, Lenovo, Toshiba and Asustek Computer, understanding that demand for notebooks is unlikely to recover in the fourth quarter, while Apple's products are taking up all the glory in the market, will limit their initial Ultrabook shipment volume to below 50,000 units for testing the water, according to sources from notebook makers.

To encourage its notebook brand partners, Intel will host a conference for Ultrabooks on September 14 in the hopes to resolve some technology bottlenecks and attract more notebook players to join the Ultrabook industry.

Acer, Toshiba, Lenovo and Asustek's new Ultrabook models will all start shipping in September and products will appear in the global retail channels in October. Acer's Ultrabook is manufactured by both Compal Electronics and Quanta Computer, while Toshiba's machine is outsourced to Compal with Lenovo's device handled by Wistron and Asustek's model by Pegatron Technology.

With Ultrabook still having some issues over cost and technologies that still need to be resolved, notebook brand vendors, due to their previous experience with CULV-based ultra-thin notebook, are mostly taking a conservative attitude about their new ultra-thin machine and only placed limited orders to their upstream suppliers.

The sources pointed out that the notebook industry only has Ultrabook as its last resort to boost overall shipments; however, due to the global economy still having not yet recovered, demand for notebook is unlikely to boost strongly, making Intel's goal of having Ultrabook to account for 40% of the global consumer notebook shipments by 2012, difficult to achieve.

Source:digitimes