Intel Corp. took center stage at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to step up the Ultrabook barrage as the chipmaker promised more than 75 ultrabook designs will show up this year.

Intel has been leading the effort to push Ultrabooks as laptop and notebook computer sales dwindle in favor of tablets computers. Intel vice-president and general manager of the Intel PC group Mooly Eden touted the advantages of the ultrabook during the Intel press conference at CES. Ultrabooks, an Intel trademark term, is a super-thin, stylish laptop less than an inch thick with 14 to 15 inch screens and running on Intel Core processors. Eden also presented some new options for the ultrabook that will come this year including motion-control, voice recognition and multitouch capability.

Intel's new partnership with Nuance, the company behind the technology of Apple's Siri voice assistant, will add voice-control to ultrabooks. Users will be able to access app, send E-mails and post updates to their FaceBook page with voice commands. Dragon speech recognition will allow users to use voice control without the need to use the cloud. Peter Mahoney, Nuance's chief marketing officer said voice recognition will available in nine languages.

Touchscreen capability will no longer be the monopoly of tablets and smartphones as Eden said touchscreens will be added to laptops for the first time. The touch-based ultrabook will work as a traditional laptop but transforms to a touch-enabled screen in computing.

"Lately we've seen people moving to touch which is very intuitive but for some reason touch skipped the notebook and the Ultrabook. It was dedicated to phones and tablets,'' he said.

"It's not going to skip the Ultrabook any more. People do not want to give away their keyboard but they want to touch."

Intel showed off some interesting concept ultrabooks. One concept ultrabook, called the Nikiski, includes a touchpad in addition to the keyboard and display. The device has a cut out on top of the clamshell cover so that the device transforms into a tablet when the cover is closed. Users can scroll through Microsoft 8 to control the device.

Intel is also adding gesture controls to the ultrabook. Eden showed off a game that used an integrated camera to control a virtual slingshot to fire rocks at a building. Intel also said that ultrabooks will be more secure with future devices bundled with the Intel Anti-Theft technology that locks down stolen devices and Intel Identification Protection Technology for hardware authentication. Intel also demonstrated a security feature that will delight online shoppers. Intel is partnering with MasterCard to provide an online payment solution using built-in Near Field Communication technology that will allow shoppers to pay for their purchases by tapping their credit cards on the touchpad. If the credit card is stolen the card can't be used to make transactions on other devices with NFC receivers.