Digitimes reported today that Intel will be meeting with its Original Design Manufacturer (ODM) partners in Taipei next week to discuss the Bill of Materials (BOM) that outlines the components to be used in Intel’s Ultrabook notebook class.  The goal of the meeting will be to tweak the Bill of Materials such that the initial selling price will be below $1,000 USD.

Intel has further broken up the Ultrabook category into two thickness classes of 18mm and 21mm.  The 18mm reference designs, of which Intel has rendered five, have thus far omitted any optical drives.  An example of the 18mm design can be seen in the upcoming Asus UX21 and UX31 ultrabooks.  The proposed Bill of Materials for the 18mm ultrabooks is between $493 and $710 USD while the 21mm ultrabooks BOM is between $475 and $650 USD. 

Beyond the Bill of Materials, the site notes that Intel is further planning to release next generation ultrabooks based on 22nm Ivy Bridge processors in 2012 and 22nm Haswell CPUs in 2013.  These ultrabooks will come in sizes ranging from 11" to 17."  The 11" to 13" models will have a thickness of 18mm while the 14" to 17" models will be of the 21mm variety.

Apple Insider notes that the push from Intel to keep the cost of materials and initial selling price for its ultrabooks below $1,000 may be due to the $999 entry level Macbook selling so well and Intel’s desire to provide a competitive product that can match the thin-ness of the Mac notebooks and is priced to sell.  Do you think Intel’s ultrabooks will catch on with consumers, or will it be another niche and/or gimmick product?