Netbook market initially ran into the same basic problem in the first year, with many returning the netbooks because they got them thinking they could use them like regular laptops but had to face the fact they only provided basic usage.

The reality is even the top of the line next gen ARM chip will only be rivaling the netbook range of performance, and even with Windows 8 won’t support legacy apps or like netbooks won’t be able to run the more powerful programs.  While they also have to compete with the traditional mobile market devices when aside from the laptop form factor aren’t really providing anything more.

You’re also assuming of course they will ever even come out with a $200 ARM Chromebook. 

Unfortunately, Chrome isn’t proving to be as good a cloud OS as intended.  The latest Chromebooks have warranted the use of Celeron instead of ATOM chips for example, which means they felt it needs more performance.

So nothing less than the top of the line next gen ARM chips will do and those are extremely unlikely to be priced low enough.

Even now with something like the Kindle Fire, which allows for profits from services instead of hardware pricing, is still being sold at a loss.  Meaning pretty much anyone else will charge more for equivalent specs and despite prices getting a little better over the next year that anything in the $200 or lower range that isn’t from a company like Amazon will continue to be lower quality.  Never mind Chromebooks are usually 11.6″ size systems, which is quite a bit larger than a 7″ tablet.

As for Ultrabooks, the minimal estimates for parts costs don’t go below $475.  You have to understand, they’re still full laptops and are equipped with premium parts like up to 128GB SATA III speed SSDs and not the cheap type most mobile devices get. They’re also still larger than most mobile devices.  So have a naturally higher material cost than smaller devices.

While prices will come down a bit once they cover the investment costs for Ultrabooks.  Products always cost more when they first come out but prices soon drop after a couple of months even if the technology doesn’t improve but we’re only a few months from Ivy Bridge coming out anyway.  So the technology will improve and they’re also coming up with another update in 2013 with Haswell that should further help them reduce costs. 

So even with the same profit margins the prices should start dropping by then.

All of which means ARM laptops will likely mainly only effect the netbook market, where people already expect low prices with performance enough for basic usages and supported size ranges from 7″ to 12.1″ screen sized systems.