Taiwanese ODMs which produce notebooks for some of the world’s biggest brands including Acer, Dell, HP and Lenovo are set to see shipments fall by up to 20% in April as the transition to Intel’s much anticipated Ivy Bridge platform takes hold.</p><p>

The new chips are set to land later in the month, but large scale shipments of notebooks based on the processors are not likely until the end of the quarter, according to Digitimes.

But expected to rise in May and June. You know what this means? New laptops in May.

Nine-hour battery life, 3G or 4G connectivity (optional), "connected standby", 30-day standby, weight below 1.5lbs (0.7kg), <9mm thick. And: 10in or 11in screens.

Let's see how closely they can stick to that; ultrabooks are already suffering specification creep (in a bad way). (Thanks @rquick for the link.)

Intel is showing off a reference design of their upcoming Clover Trail platform in a 10 inch tablet form factor.  Clover Trail should be released in the second half of 2012 and they appear to be on track to launch right along side Windows 8.

Services such as PayPass—which will allow users to make payments by tapping their credit cards to the device using NFC—and Nuance speech recognition are being incorporated into new Intel partner devices. The goal, said the chip giant, is not only to produce thinner and lighter machines, but laptops that are both fast and capable too, thanks to Intel’s forthcoming Ivy Bridge chipset.

"My desktop isn't the only computer I plan to replace in the next few months. I need a new laptop too, and my goal is simple: to find a 13" MacBook Air that isn't made by Apple.<br />
"It turns out that I'm not the only one wanting this mythical non-Apple MacBook Air. Intel wants them too—it calls them Ultrabooks. The chip company has been kicking the Ultrabook idea around for a few months now, and it has grand ambitions: by the end of next year, it wants 40% of PC laptops to be Ultrabooks."<br />
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To which end it has a $300m fund to "invest in companies that are working to build that kind of hardware - ultrathing, rapid boot, metal case, long battery life, long standby time.<br />
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But as the article shows (and other analysts agree) that's not so easy. A really good examination of why the PC OEM business can do some things really well, but others far less well.

"Apple may be having phenomenal success with its iOS App Store ecosystem, but Intel thinks it's going about online app sales in the wrong way.<br />
"As might be expected, Intel prefers its app-store-in-a-box AppUp program, which allows world+dog to create their own app stores using its software tools, then let Intel handle all the messy details such as collecting payments and delivering the software to customers, all for a 70/30 revenue split."<br />
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Essentially Intel wants to let people build franchises, but take the same cut as Apple or Google does. Hard to see the real benefit of franchising your own app store.

"Investors aren't the only ones betting on the decline of Microsoft Windows: Intel is working with Google and hardware partners to get its chips into a bunch of Android tablets this year.<br />
"PC makers like Asus had already said they were building Android tablets based on Atom, Intel's low-powered chip for portable devices.<br />
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"But earlier this week, an Intel exec confirmed that its newest version of Atom -- previously codenamed Oak Trail -- will show up in tablets running Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) later this year."

"Intel is taking on arch rival ARM today with the launch of new Intel Atom chips for tablet computers.<br />
"The Atom is a low-power version of Intel’s computer chips, and it is aimed squarely at tablets, netbooks, and smartphones. It represents the chip giant’s best chance to catch up with ARM, which dominates the mobile space with its power-efficient chip architecture and dozens of chip design partners.<br />
"Code-named Oak Trail, the new Intel Atom Z670 processor will appear in 35 tablet computers and other mobile devices this year, said Bill Kircos, general manager of marketing for Intel’s netbook and tablet group, in an interview."<br />
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Bear in mind that if you see a headline that ends with a questionmark, it is usually correctly answered with "No".