No Ultrabook Pep Rally at IDF? What?

This is normally a nerve-wracking time of year for PC makers, because they have to place bets on the upcoming holiday selling season. Bet too much, and they’ll have to shed the overstock after New Year’s with profit-bleeding promotions. Bet too little, and their competitors will gladly fill the orders.

The Windows 8-based ultrabooks they’ll be offering are pretty cool – cool enough that the PC vendors should be betting big. But after a year of losing sales to tablets, they’re not. Their pre-season jitters are on steroids.

With that as a backdrop, you would have expected Intel CEO Paul Otellini to deliver the pep talk of his career at this year’s Intel Developer Forum (IDF). Maybe something like this: “Now, finally, we’ve got systems that address many of the shortcomings that the tablet phenomenon has exposed. So let’s go out there and take back our market!”

But he didn’t. In fact, he didn’t even speak this year. Why not?

Read the entire column on InformationWeek.com.