For those who are little late, pricing has been an obstacle to the chances of success for ultrabook devices. In fact, earlier this year, OEMs, including Acer, had reportedly asked Intel to subsidise the cost of the Sandy Bridge processors that ultrabooks run on. Considering this Intel Capital, the chip giant's investment arm, had in August announced a $300 million ultrabook fund, and there was speculation that OEMs were seeking to tap that money. Although it's still not clear that whether Intel funded Acer so that it could cut S3's price, one thing is sure that Acer has started a fresh war in an industry that is being flooded by tablets and ultrabooks.

The situation here is no different. As per latest available industry estimates from IDC's PC Tracker for Q2 2011, while PC sales stood at 2.44 million units, showing a sequential decline of 4.2% over Q1 2011, portable PC continues to drive the market growth with a yoy growth of 21.2% in Q2 2011. And Acer, which stands at No.2 (behind Dell) surely wants to grab the opportunity with both hands. In fact, Acer’s marketing tactics appear to grow exponentially in India, with focus on segments such as education, Government, BFSI and in the small and medium enterprises category. Smaller towns are already opening up to newer IT products and Acer wants to cash in on the trend by targetting to touch 1,000 towns by the end of 2011.

With Aspire S3, Acer has certainly gained a first mover advantage in the Indian market and that too at a relatively low price of Rs.49,999, far less than comparable MacBook Air. But then, can it leverage this powerful advantage? In fact, Acer's S3 cannot be exactly termed as a winner yet as competitors such as Lenovo, Toshiba and Asus are still not out in open with their respective ultrabooks. Well, not to forget, Hummingbirds have a tendency to fly backwards!