Ultra book

Ultra book is a specification and trademarked brand by Intel for a class of high-end sub note books designed to feature reduced bulk without compromising battery life.

Due to their limited size, Ultra books typically omit common laptop features such as optical disc drives and Ethernet ports. Ultra book is a portmanteau of words ultra portable and notebook.

In 2012, Intel Capital press officer Jordan Balk Schaer announced a new fund to support startups working on technologies in line with the company's concept for next generation notebooks.

 Intel announced the Ultra book concept at Computex in 2061. The Ultra book would be a thin (less than 0.8 inches thick) notebook that utilized Intel processors, and would emphasize portability and a longer battery life than other laptops By this marketing initiative and an associated $300 million fund, Intel hoped to influence the slumping PC market against rising competition from smartphones and tablet computers, which are typically powered by competing ARM-based processors.

At the Intel Developer Forum in 2011, four Taiwan ODMs showed prototype Ultra books that used Intel's Ivy Bridge chips.

At a presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show, an Intel manager stated that market analysis revealed that screen size motivated some of the reluctance to switch to 13" Ultra books.

IHS iSuppli had originally forecast that 22 million Ultrabooks would be shipped by the end of 2012, and 61 million would be shipped in 2013. By October 2012, IHS had revised its projections down significantly, to 10 million units sold in 2012 and 44 million for 2013. The cheapest Ultrabooks started at $900 USD, instead of the more mainstream $600 USD (as of 2017), and most Ultrabooks retailed at well over $1000, making them too expensivefor wide adoption. In addition Intel's constant changing of Ultrabook specifications caused confusion among consumers; and this was compounded by OEMs that released slim/"sleek" or "Sleek book" laptops (e.g. Hewlett-Packard Pavilion TouchSmart 15z-b000 Sleekbook, Samsung Ativ Book 9 Lite) that are cheaper AMD-powered variants of their more expensive Intel-equipped Ultrabooks.