I highly doubt they will make a more affordable mobile quad-core for a LONG time. They have no competition there, and there's no telling when they will, even from themselves. AMD probably isn't ever going to be in a position to be sticking quad-core Phenoms in the average laptop, and (surprise!) they delayed Bulldozer. The mobile Core i7s were delayed as well, so Intel won't even be outdoing them for quite some time.
Quad-core desktops sure have become affordable, but it doesn't look like that's in the cards for laptops. It's too bad, considering the average new desktop is pretty much overkill at this point, so even with laptops having a disadvantage, if there was a little competition to get the prices more in line with desktops, for most of us, just one laptop would do it.