During the course of a conference call with analysts on Thursday, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said that the demand for thin laptops – called Ultrabooks – will likely be so huge in the coming times that, by the end of 2012, nearly 40 percent of the laptops in the consumer notebook arena would be Ultrabooks.

Noting that the year 2012 will witness the launch of almost 70 Ultrabooks, Otellini said at the earnings call that there will be a notable increase in the production of Ultrabooks in the second half of the year; with the result that by the year-end, Ultrabooks will account for 40 percent of the shipments of consumer notebooks.

According to Otellini, consumers will apparently show more willingness to spend in terms of purchasing laptops during the year as they trade up to the thin, high-performance, responsive and secure Ultrabooks.

To highlight his point with regard to the huge demand which Ultrabooks will likely see in 2012, Otelline drew a parallel with the 2003 marketing campaign after which demand for laptops with WiFi networking took off in a big way; and added: “I have not seen this level of excitement in our customer base since before Centrino.”

With Intel’s booth at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) having showcased nearly one dozen Ultrabooks from a number of device manufacturers – like Hewlett-Packard, Asus, LG, and Lenovo -, the company’s Ultrabook product manager Anand Lakshmanan said that a horde of notebook designs will appear on the scene this year.