The chairman of Acer Group accused Dell and Hewlett-Packard of not spending enough resources onto promotion of ultra-thin laptops based on Intel Corp.’s consumer ultra low-voltage (CULV) platform. Instead, claims JT Wang, Dell and HP simply cut prices on entry-level notebooks in order to sustain sales.

Earlier this year Intel and a number of notebook makers unveiled the so-called CULV platform that was supposed to popularize ultra-thin notebooks beyond traditional business users thanks to inexpensive processors and some savings on design and manufacturing. However, it turned out that sales of CULV have so far been disappointing.

Apparently, consumers are unwilling to acquire notebooks powered by Intel CULV because they are more expensive than traditional notebooks, larger than netbooks and could not offer very high performance. Moreover, notebook vendors have to save on materials in order to keep the costs low and that may be a factor why those machines are not very attractive.

With all that in mind, Intel reportedly decided to focus on mainstream notebook platforms in 2010 and putt fewer efforts into CULV promotion. Nonetheless, JT Wang said in an interview with DigiTimes web-site that he had managed to urge Intel to turn the focus back to the ultra-thin laptops.

According to the chairman of Acer, ultra-thin notebooks are the product that consumers really need. Meanwhile, Dell and HP are cutting prices on mainstream notebooks, which essentially makes ultra-thin mobile computers much less attractive when it comes to price-performance ratio. As a result, Dell and HP are not promoting CULV machines, which reduces popularity of ultra-thin notebooks in general.

While it is not clear why Acer is not putting a lot of effort into promotion of thin-and-light laptops itself, the company did indicate at a press event in Taiwan that in March – April, 2010, it would unveil a new, more competitive line of ultra-thin notebooks.

“As long as the price gap with mainstream notebooks is not too large, it will not be difficult for ultra-thin notebooks to grow to about 30% of the total notebook industry,” JT Wang is reported to have said.

Tags: Acer, CULV, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, HP, Celeron, Pentium, 45nm