Ultrabook fever: CES 2012 will feature ‘30 to 50 new ultrabooks’

The Consumer Electronics Association, organizer of the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, has revealed it expects this coming January’s event to play host to the launch of “30 to 50 new ultrabooks.” In spite of the downbeat global economy and the fact we already have five ultrabooks from the major manufacturers, Shawn DuBravac from the CEA have informed PC Pro that a deluge of new laptops is yet to come. We’ve already seen some evidence of Fujitsu and Lenovo’s plans for this category, and there’s also the promise Paul Otellini made last month that HP and Dell ultrabooks would be arriving in “early 2012.”

Otellini, Intel’s CEO, will be delivering the CES keynote address in January, which is also when his company’s next change of CPU microarchitecture will be made official, the 22nm Ivy Bridge. The only way we can imagine reaching that minimum of 30 new ultrabook launches, however, would involve all the present makers of those laptops introducing refreshed varieties with Ivy Bridge silicon inside them. Which would be nice.