Acer, Asus could be using Fiberglass to keep the Ultrabooks price low

Some industry sources have reported that Acer plans to release a 15inch Ultrabook in early 2012 which will be built with a fiberglass chassis manufactured by Mitac Precision Technology. Earlier Acer was scheduled to ship the Ultrabook in the last quarter of 2011, but because of unfavorable market conditions they have chosen to postpone it.

Asus, Acer and other companies who are building their Ultrabooks have been complaining about the manufacturing cost for a while, which is resulting in increasing the price of the ultrabooks to more than $1000. The price of the Intel’s processors so far is the biggest obstacle.

According to sources, the price of the Ultrabooks may get reduced by $5 to $10 with the use of fiberglass than what it costs using aluminium alloy, and is expected to knock $20 off the cost of manufacturing of the entire Ultrabook. Even the light weight factor of the Ultrabook will supposedly increase further with the Fibreglass chassis over the aluminium chassis.

Sources have also mentioned that Acer plans to outsource these fiberglass Ultrabooks to Compal Electronics.

Another update also says, Asus is also expected to use fiberglass cases from the same supplier for their future Ultrabook models. Currently they are expected to launch their aluminium based UX21 and UX31 at an event in New York City.

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