HP Ultrabook to hit market before Asus UX21?

We have talked quite a bit about the Ultrabook around here. The Ultrabook is an Intel concept that is a very thin notebook that Intel hopes to see grab a big part of the notebook market. The machines are smaller and very thin but are more like full notebooks than netbooks with slower processors and less powerful hardware. For a long time we have assumed that the Asus UX21 set to land in September would be the first Ultrabook to come to market.

Sources cited by DigiTimes claim that is not the case. These sources claim that HP is set to launch a new Ultrabook before Asus making HP the first to market. Intel is said to be heavily subsidizing the Ultrabook platform to get makers on board, perhaps this is why HP is in a hurry to get the machines out. The source of the rumor is in the Taiwan supplier community.

The source claims that there are two Ultrabooks coming from HP with the possibility of more than two. The machines will use the Core i7-2677M or i7-2637M CPUs. The sources claim that Foxconn is already shipping the Ultrabooks to HP for delivery. There is no indication from the source of what size the HP ultrabooks will be or what other hardware they will use. The Asus UX21 will come in 11.6-inch and 13-inch sizes so the HP offerings are likely to be sized similarly.

[via DigiTimes]