WORLD
Intel unveils laptops that include tablet features
Baku, June1 (AZERTAC). Intel unveiled a new category of laptops that it says will include the best features of tablets as the world`s top chipmaker struggles to find its footing in the exploding market for mobile gadgets
Netbook pioneer Asustek showed its first new PC in Intel`s "Ultrabook" class, the UX series, on Monday at the Computex computer show in Taipei. Intel said models made by other manufacturers would go on sale by Christmas and cost under $1,000.
Ultrabooks will be svelte and lightweight but still pack high-performance processors. They should account for 40 percent of laptop sales to consumers by the end of next year, Tom Kilroy, a senior vice president at Intel, told Reuters in an interview in San Francisco.
In Taipei on Tuesday, Intel`s vice president Mooly Eden called the Ultrabook a "different category" from the tablet and notebook, hoping that it would appeal to a different category of consumers.
Santa Clara, California-based Intel is eager to make laptops more attractive to consumers who are increasingly captivated by Apple`s iPad and other mobile gadgets.
Its processors power 80 percent of the world`s PCs but Intel has failed so far to adapt them for smartphones and tablets. Manufacturers like Motorola and Apple favor processors made using energy-efficient technology licensed by Britain`s ARM Holdings.
Commenting on competition with ARM, Eden said Intel is late in the tablet market but it is not a "failure."
This month, Intel took the wraps off next-generation "3D" technology that crams more transistors onto microchips, betting it will eventually become a significant advantage in tablets and smartphones.
Intel also plans to shrink the circuits on its mobile chips by three sizes within three years -- a faster pace than normal --to make them much more efficient.
The Ultrabook is not the first PC category that Intel and Asus have promoted together. In 2007, Asus introduced a small and simplified laptop that is widely viewed as the first of many low-cost "netbooks" geared toward surfing the Internet.