ITWire

Greg Welch, director of Intel's Ultrabook group, has told the Wall Street Journal that his company received "a real wake-up call" when Apple said it would take its business elsewhere unless Intel made dramatic reductions in power consumption.

The CPU is one of the major items on a portable device's power budget, do Intel's announced intention to reduce the average power draw from between 35 and 40 watts to 15 watts makes a significant difference to battery life.

Ultrabook is Intel's term for a slim (2cm or thinner) and light notebook priced below $US1000 to allow widespread adoption. One way of looking at it is to say an Ultrabook is a MacBook Air that doesn't come from Apple (and yes, the Air starts at $US999).

Intel last week launched its $US300 million Ultrabook Fund to invest in companies developing hardware and software that could improve Ultrabooks.