"The standardisation of white-books in the Australian market will create less differentiation for white-book manufacturers and reduce the amount of flexibility in the offerings they bring to the customer," Francis says.
"AMD offers a high degree of flexibility across the range of processor families through the validation and recommendation of multiple motherboard and chipset designs. This flexibility allows white-box vendors to position a differentiated product range at competitive price points without locking them into a proprietary solution, thus remaining competitive in an aggressively priced market."
While some local system builders might see standardisation as the saviour of white-book, multinational players are also quick to point out that design innovation is a key factor in their current domination of the notebook market.
Access to the existing notebooks standards – such as those for hard drives and CPUs – has not seen white-book take off, says Toshiba Information Systems general manager Mark Whittard.
"It is the differentiation through design and technology innovation that will continue to reward companies like Toshiba who continue to invest in research and development, design, engineering and manufacturing," Whittard says.
"A simple example is the standardisation of the CPU. In a thin and light notebook chassis you have heat dissipation and thermal reliability issues that need to be resolved through engineering expertise, innovative patented designs and manufacturing processes."
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Toshiba's Whittard: Generic features working against local builders |
"Therefore whilst these are unbranded there is lack of differentiation from one white-book to another so that only leaves price and local service and value add as your differentiator," he says.
"Additionally white-box products typically are assembled using lower quality components due to the fact that global brands ensure priority supply of premium quality components for utilisation in their brand products."
Buyers have a very different criteria when considering notebooks as opposed to desktops, says Lenovo offerings manager David Nicol.
"We’re talking about size, weight and battery life – criteria that require more sophisticated technology and design than a desktop and are therefore more difficult for a local assembler to deliver," Nicol says.
"As long as major notebook vendors including Lenovo continue to strive to deliver customers the thinnest and lightest notebook and differentiate ourselves by design features, for example titanium casing and metal hinging, then it’s going to be difficult to achieve a standard form factor that takes interchangeable components."