If 2011 was the year of the tablet the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES), 2012 seems to be the year of the ultrabook. With sales of budget laptops plummeting, computer makers are swinging the pendulum toward sleeker, metallic and pricier portable PCs that they’re calling Ultrabooks. That’s the term coined by chip-maker Intel for a new class of laptops that, similar to the MacBook Air, are ultra-thin yet with internal processing on par with other laptops. The ultrabooks — manufactured by Toshiba, Samsung, Lenovo, HP, LG and others — are designed to start up as quickly as possible when turned on.

We used Social Radar to analyze conversations around Ultrabooks online.

Ultrabook buzz

The term ‘ultrabook’ wasn’t mentioned at all before May 2011. The term gained traction in late 2011, and now thanks to CES 2012 the term is skyrocketing.

Ultrabook sentiment

Conversations around Ultrabooks are currently 84% positive.

• Acer appears in 23% of Ultrabook conversations and is 87% positive.
• HP appears in 18% of Ultrabook conversations and is 88% positive.
• Levono appears in 16% of Ultrabook conversations and is 96% positive.
• MacBook appears in 17% of Ultrabook conversations and is 61% positive.
• Samsung appears in 12% of Ultrabook conversations and is 80% positive.

Will you considering purchasing an Ultrabook?

What do you think of when you hear the word apple? A fruit that keeps the doctor away? George Washington? Pie? Nope.

How about consumer electronics. Welcome to 2009.

Brands often become ubiquitous words for their products, like Kleenex facial tissues. But who would have predicted 50 years ago that the fruit kids brought their teachers as a gift would be replaced in our language by a brand name?

There are hundreds of types of apples that can be used in countless recipes, but the topic cloud for the word “apple” (pulled from millions of Internet conversations over the last year) shows that technology-related words were far more prominent than recipe or baking.

To build the trend chart below, we used a massive query including all Apple products (iPod, iPhone, Macbook, Mac, etc.), software (iWork, iLife, etc.) as well as words associated with Apple (technology, software, computer, apps, features, developers, etc.) compared to all other apple-related content (excluding Big Apple, Fiona Apple, etc.).

What are some other examples of successful branding? What do you think of first when you hear the word windows?