Next-Gen Ultrabooks Must Have Touchscreens: Intel | TechTree.com

Next-Gen Ultrabooks Must Have Touchscreens: Intel

Chip-making giant feels the future is all "touchy" as it offers subsidised CPUs to touch panel adopters.

 

Intel is said to have made it mandatory for manufacturers of Haswell-based Ultrabooks that the devices must have touchscreens. Haswell is the code name for Intel's upcoming generation of processors (22nm fab and June 2013 launch), which will succeed the current generation of IvyBridge processors. A DIGITIMES article mentions that the leading chipmaker has reportedly made the rule because it thinks that there is not much money to be saved by not including this feature.

To alleviate any additional expense, Intel has even gone further by subsidising its processor prices to Taiwan-based supply chain makers, who will include a touch panel in Ultrabooks based on the upcoming platform. While this seems good, we wonder for how long this subsidy arrangement will last until it starts hurting Intel's profit margins.

The article also mentions that there is a shortage of touch panels due to weak yields, which is the main hurdle towards mainstream availability of touchscreen notebooks. The source has claimed that because of this reason, such devices will account for only 10% to 15% of the total notebook shipments by the end of this year. This means that even with the aforementioned subsidies from Intel, it will be difficult to have touch panels on all future Ultrabooks until the yields do not improve.

It is clear that Intel wants to stimulate the penetration of touchscreen laptops, and it might have something to do with the increasingly wholehearted adoption of touchscreen gadgets by the masses since the past few years. A beneficiary in this move is going to be Microsoft with its Windows 8 desktop OS that is heavily oriented towards touch devices. This, to some extent, seems to be similar to the push for 3D from television manufacturers, as most users with some access to a keyboard seem to still switch to the traditional desktop mode of Windows 8, rather than use the tile-based touch UI. Prices of touchscreen-based notebooks are currently at least 25% more than non-touch versions of the same and such pricing can be a deterrent in selling such products.


TAGS: Laptops, Intel

 
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