Notebookitalia have just reported on a 2012-2013 roadmap from Malata, a brand of the Wanlida Group in China. It includes a bunch of mobile products but interestingly it mentions ultrathin products in 13.3”, 11.6” and a 10” screen size. More interesting is that the company appears to merge the Ultrabook and netbook category by offering an Intel Atom Cedar Trail option as a CPU.
Unfortunately, there’s very little information here but one thing is for sure, offering an Ultrabook chassis with an Intel Atom platform option inside is an interesting move from a marketing perspective. Is it a high-spec netbook or a low-end Ultrabook? Customers will be confused, that’s for sure, but why not use the same chassis for all your mobile laptop solutions? A 13.3” ultra-light with SSD, 50% longer battery life and lower cost could certainly appeal to some and in terms of competition, could sit will in the market to fight against the lower-end of AMDs ultrathin strategy. We think Intel should be considering this secondary market and re-fresh of the netbook idea but it needs to be managed carefully.
We have lots of questions that we’ll be asking Malata about next week.
Coming next:
The iNetultravertibletabletbookpad.
Grab that domian ;-)
Uh, Didn’t Malata start adopting the Ultra Thin design from Intel before Intel proposed Ultrabooks?
You know the “Canoe Lake” reference design that Intel came up with to show how thin Netbooks could be designed…
I take it as a good sign that they’re making Atom-based Ultrabook knockoffs while they’ve been pumping out Atom-based Macbook Airs for quite a while.
Does this officially mean that Ultrabooks have hit the big time now that they’ll have cheap Chinese knock-offs?
(Lol @ the marketing photo above that’s a complete copy of the original MSI X Series photos.)
Adam
Exactly what I would like. A 10.1 with atom and huge battery life. The atom is enough for all my needs. Massive.
Battery life is actually limited by the PC ecosystem. This I believe is part of the reason why the Toshiba AC100 Smartbook had disappointing battery life. You might understand what I’m saying in a year or two. :)
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5259/ultrabook-head-to-head-acer-aspire-s3-vs-asus-ux31e/5
You can see for example, the UX31 is competitive with even one of the most power frugal Netbook, the Asus 1001P: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/506?vs=278