Fujitsu to hit the ultrabook market next year

Fujitsu is one of the most important IT services provider in the world right now, manufacturing computers, as well as mobile phones, software and hardware products. And while the Japanese-based giant can’t compare with Asus, Acer or Toshiba when talking about laptop sales, that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t get a chunk of the fresh and rising ultrabook niche.

Based on a few leaked (and very blurry) photos from Ultrabooknews.com, Fujitsu may be very close of revealing not one, but two ultrabooks.

Update: Here’s Fujitsu’s main ultrabook, the Lifebook U772, in a thorough review.

The first is a 13-incher that looks almost ready and that could hit the market as soon as next January, when the International CES consumer technology tradeshow will take place in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, as I already mentioned, the pics are pretty low-quality and there isn’t much we can tell in terms of the future ultrabook’s specs or features.

The 13-incher doesn’t look so hot in this picture, but it might well be the image quality to blame

There seems to be a USB 3.0 port on the right, as well as another six unknown connectors (two on the right and four on the left), which could mean that the Fujitsu 13-incher could be close to the Asus UX31 or Lenovo U300S at least in this area.

On the other hand, what we can tell from the pictures is that the laptop looks pretty thick, at least in comparison with all the other ultrabooks released or due to be released soon. Furthermore, the keyboard frame looks pretty wide too and the overall design, while classic-looking, is kind of bland and dull.

The first Fujitsu ultrabook will most likely feature a USB 3.0 port.

The second ultrabook is even more mysterious, being still in the prototype phase, according to the leaked photos. This will most definitely sport an 11-inch screen, but that’s pretty much all we can say about it right now.

If we were to speculate, however, we would expect the 13-incher to be powered by an Intel Core Sandy Bridge processor, as it is the case with all of today’s ultrabooks, while the smaller and thinner 11-incher could feature an Ivy Bridge chipset, which is yet to be released by Intel, but should hit the market next January, at the latest.

The 11-incher is still a prototype, but it could feature a snappy Ivy Bridge processor.

All in all, we are intrigued about the possibility of welcoming a new member to the ultrabook family and we are looking forward to seeing if Fujitsu can step up its game and become a real competitor for Asus, Acer, Samsung, Lenovo or Toshiba.