Peripherals that use Thunderbolt, the high-speed interconnect developed by Intel and heartily embraced by Apple, have taken their sweet time coming to market. The options so far include a high-end professional RAID from Promise, an expensive portable RAID from LaCie, a pricey display from Apple, and a $50 cable necessary to connect them all. However, a number of companies in attendance at CES had some interesting products to show us, most of which will hit the market this year. Though Apple launched Thunderbolt in full force across most of its products in 2011, 2012 may finally see the standard gaining traction across the industry.

We got to see several products that have been announced but not yet released to the public, including Blackmagic's Intensity Shuttle video device, Belkin's long-promised Thunderbolt Express dock, and LaCie's 2Big Thunderbolt drives.

Belkin's Thunderbolt Express dock in particular has been significantly redesigned from the initial concepts the company reveled at IDF last fall. It now features three USB 2.0 ports; FireWire 800, HDMI, 3.5mm audio, and gigabit Ethernet ports; and a downstream Thunderbolt port for daisy-chaining additional devices. The design also includes a cable pass through for a MagSafe power adapter, designed to make it easy to keep on a desk for docking portable Macs.

Unfortunately, Mac users looking for an alternative to Apple's $999 27" Thunderbolt Display will have to wait until September for the dock to ship. It will also cost $299—quite a bit more than we expected. Belkin representatives told Ars that existing docking solutions for MacBook users are similarly priced, but aren't nearly as elegant or easy to use. And, if you want to use a non-Apple display, it may be your only option. (For what it's worth, Belkin said that it is considering offering a less-expensive dock solution in the future.)

A few companies also announced new products set to debut in 2012. High-speed storage is still the most popular use for Thunderbolt, like Western Digital's large capacity MyBook Studio II drive with a Thunderbolt interface. The two-drive RAID will come in up to 6TB of capacity, though pricing and availability haven't been announced. Hitachi's G-Tech brand will also have a two-drive G-RAID available shortly as well.

Intel had a working sample of Elgato's new mobile Thunderbolt SSD drive, which is set to ship in February for $429.95 for 120GB capacity and $699.95 for 240GB. The drive is comparable in size to most mobile 2.5" drives, but its SSD internals are fast, silent, and resilient to bumps and drops. It's also self-powered by its single Thunderbolt port.

OCZ has also announced its own SSD-based drive with a Thunderbolt interface called the Lightfoot. The incredibly thin, compact device is essentially a bare SSD board clad in a sleek aluminum shell. It will come in capacities of up to 1TB, and like the Elgato drive has just a single Thunderbolt port. Unfortunately, OCZ hasn't said anything about availability or pricing, but don't expect it to come cheap.

Seagate showed us Thunderbolt docks for its GoFlex line of adaptable mobile and desktop external drives. Company representatives told Ars that its GoFlex Thunderbolt Adapter for 2.5" mobile GoFlex drives should be available within the next couple months, and sells for $100. The GoFlex Desk Thunderbolt won't be available until the second half of the year, and will sell for about $200. One nice benefit of Segate's solution is that GoFlex users can immediately upgrade existing drives to Thunderbolt using the new adapters.

LaCie had another new Thunderbolt product it calls an eSATA Hub Thuderbolt Series. The somewhat large device has two Thunderbolt ports and two eSATA ports. This allows the adapter to be put anywhere in a Thunderbolt chain and connect up to two eSATA drives to a Thunderbolt-equipped computer. We think this may have limited utility, but if you're a working pro with eSATA drives as part of your desktop setup, the solution might be a perfect fit for connecting to a mobile workstation.

We were also able to see a couple unannounced products being demoed in Intel's booth. The company had a working prototype of Lenovo's recently announced ThinkPad Edge S430 connected to multiple Thunderbolt drives and a heretofore unknown AOC 27" Thunderbolt display. Little is known about the AOC display, but we did find an Ethernet and audio port on the back. We didn't see any USB or other ports as Apple's Thunderbolt Display has.

The Lenovo S430, set to ship in the second quarter of 2012, was streaming five different video files, each from a different drive. Four of the video files were playing simultaneously on the AOC display while a fifth played on the S430's main display.

All the devices were connected using a non-Apple Thunderbolt cable, which we were told is manufactured by Sumitomo. The all-black cable wasn't branded, and Intel representatives couldn't tell us who might market the cables or what price they might sell for. However, we suspect the cables to come in below Apple's $50 asking price.

Intel had no word on when active optical cabling would be available, which would allow cable runs between devices to extend beyond 3m, but suggested we might hear more about that later this year.

Finally, we were able to suss out a few details about why Thunderbolt devices are taking so long to come to market. One vendor told Ars that supply of Thunderbolt controllers has been constrained somewhat as Apple was typically first in line to get them, with certain storage vendors then getting access, and others in line after that. We know that next-generation Thunderbolt controllers should be available around the second quarter of this year when Ivy Bridge launches, and that Intel plans an "official" launch of general Thunderbolt availability then.

We also heard that there are potential intellectual property issues associated with licensing Thunderbolt that has some vendors leery about Thunderbolt. We weren't able to learn what the specific issues are, but we heard similar complaints from another source last year shortly after Thunderbolt was unveiled by Apple and Intel. Hopefully those issues can be resolved; the vendors we spoke to are anxious to get their product ideas in the pipeline as they expect Thunderbolt adoption to grow significantly in the coming year.