Vlad Savov, reporting for The Verge:

Acer Global President Jianren Weng has been quoted at CeBIT today reiterating something he said at the beginning of December: ultrabooks will drop to the crazy-low price of $499 in 2013 and compete directly against Apple’s iPad.

Wow. That’s pretty bold. I guess the ultrabook thing’s worked out great for these guys, and they’re making money hand over fist, in order to make such dramatic price-cuts!

Speaking with Christoph Pohlmann of Acer’s laptop team, we learned that the current $799 / €699 price for the Aspire S3 is too low for Acer to actually generate any profit from it. The company is merely breaking even when selling its entry-level ultrabook model and the venture is only made worthwhile by the higher-specced SKUs pulling in a surplus.

Oh.