White-Box Futures Looking Dim
It seems that sales of white-box PCs may turn a whiter shade of pale.
According to a report from IDC, the share of white-box computers hasn't changed
that much, dropping from a 44 percent share of the worldwide market in 2003
to 37 percent in 2006. However, the white-book market has fallen from an unimpressive
8.5 percent share to a 5.6 percent share over the same period of time. Given
the growing popularity of the general laptop systems market -- to the point
where laptops are easily the most dominant form factor among PCs -- this isn't
good news for white-box manufacturing.
What puts the smaller white-box makers at a disadvantage in the notebook market
(thereby making it hard to fight back) is that they count on an oversupply of
computer parts that they can snap up at a significant discount. But increasingly,
those overly abundant parts are designed for specific, and not generic, notebook
models. Mixing and matching components in a notebook is not as easy as doing
so with desktop and server systems.
Posted by Ed Scannell on November 01, 2007 at 11:57 AM