Who really makes Laptops? the "Dirty little secret of the Laptop Industry."

[inhotep]

"Virtually none of the "Name Brand" manufacture their own laptops. The few notable exceptions are IBM, Acer, Toshiba, Twinhead and Apple. Yet, even Toshiba and Apple do not make all of their own. All of the rest buy their laptops from what is called an Original Design Manufacturer (ODM).
"ODMs are the true manufacturers who actually cast, and assemble the main unit which includes the motherboard, outside casing, and display. A few examples of ODMs are Quanta, Compal, Clevo, Mitac, Asus, AOPEN (Acer), Uniwill, and TwinHead-- perhaps you have never heard of these companies before. But you have definitely seen their systems under other well known brand names. ODMs are usually located somewhere in Asia, and may have distribution centers in the US. ODMs distribute their product to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). Each ODM sells its computers to several different OEMs."


"An ODM named Compal (not to be confused with Compaq) makes some of the the DELL, Hewlett Packard and Compaq line of laptops--plus some others.
Quanta makes many of the Dell Latitude, IBM, and Sony Vaio laptops."

"DELL buys most of their systems from Aopen (Acer), Compal and Quanta."

Dell outsurce 100% of there laptops. :brokenheart:
**note: published before the IBM PC and Lenova merger.
source:
Hp, idc, Merrill Lynch
@
http://www.gen-x-pc.com/laptopmanu.htm

 

[dnuggett]

Ohhh... but wait you said that Dell's were contracted out to Asus in another thread.

/grabs popcorn
/pulls up lawnchair
/waits for inhotep bashing to start
.profit

 

[inhotep]

Originally posted by: dnuggett
Ohhh... but wait you said that Dell's were contracted out to Asus in another thread.

/grabs popcorn
/pulls up lawnchair
/waits for inhotep bashing to start
.profit

i was wrong on that.

 

[Albis]

so is this some kind of bad sales pitch you are trying to make?

 

[notoriousformula]

my uncle works for Quanta

 

[ShellGuy]

For the love of all things computer LOCK this thing.



Will G.

 

[roguerower]

ihotep, you keep trying to make a point, but it always turns out to be crappy. Forget about it and move on. I love my dell. Damn thing could kick ur crappy pos any day.

 

[jspeicher]

yes, its unanimous, we love our dells, and we paid diddly-squat for them compared to comparable notebooks. hurray for dell.

 

[beatle]

Exactly what is your point? The Eagle Talon and the Mitsubishi Eclipse are the same car. The Pontiac Vibe and the Toyota Matrix are the same car. The Geo/Chevy Prism and the Toyota Corolla are the same car.

Laptops are built by the same manufacturer, but are still very different. Show us some examples where you can buy an identical laptop branded by two different companies, then maybe you'll have an argument.

 

[inhotep]

To educate people about their laptops, so they don't get blinded.
This thread is really useful for people who is considering to purchase a laptop. You can?t learn about the laptop business in school.
Now people have more to consider, which can be good or bad.
If I get a $750 off of dell, I may consider buying it. However, I would make an educated judgement before buying, which is not implying to disregard dell/brand X, but to to consider more possiblities. You know what I mean?

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

Originally posted by: inhotep
To educate people about their laptops, so they don't get blinded.
This thread is really useful for people who is considering to purchase a laptop. You can?t learn about the laptop business in school.
Now people have more to consider, which can be good or bad.
If I get a $750 off of dell, I may consider buying it. However, I would make an educated judgement before buying, which is not implying to disregard dell/brand X, but to to consider more possiblities. You know what I mean?

Take it somewhere else. Maybe you don't realize that AT is a hardware website, you aren't telling anyone here anything they don't know.

 

[beatle]

Originally posted by: inhotep
To educate people about their laptops, so they don't get blinded.
This thread is really useful for people who is considering to purchase a laptop. You can?t learn about the laptop business in school.
Now people have more to consider, which can be good or bad.
If I get a $750 off of dell, I may consider buying it. However, I would make an educated judgement before buying, which is not implying to disregard dell/brand X, but to to consider more possiblities. You know what I mean?

If your primary objective is to educate people, don't word your posts as flamebait. Again, post comparison systems to back this up. Just because laptop brands share manufacturing plants doesn't make them equivalent.

Believe me, I've read the articles on PowerNotebooks.com. I had every intention of buying a non-major-branded laptop when I made my purchase, but I couldn't pass up a $400 savings.

Look at this laptop. Does it share a platform with another company? Who makes it? It looks like a nice system for the price, comparable to the 700m.

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: inhotep
"Virtually none of the "Name Brand" manufacture their own laptops. The few notable exceptions are IBM, Acer, Toshiba, Twinhead and Apple. Yet, even Toshiba and Apple do not make all of their own. All of the rest buy their laptops from what is called an Original Design Manufacturer (ODM).
"ODMs are the true manufacturers who actually cast, and assemble the main unit which includes the motherboard, outside casing, and display. A few examples of ODMs are Quanta, Compal, Clevo, Mitac, Asus, AOPEN (Acer), Uniwill, and TwinHead-- perhaps you have never heard of these companies before. But you have definitely seen their systems under other well known brand names. ODMs are usually located somewhere in Asia, and may have distribution centers in the US. ODMs distribute their product to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). Each ODM sells its computers to several different OEMs."


"An ODM named Compal (not to be confused with Compaq) makes some of the the DELL, Hewlett Packard and Compaq line of laptops--plus some others.
Quanta makes many of the Dell Latitude, IBM, and Sony Vaio laptops."

"DELL buys most of their systems from Aopen (Acer), Compal and Quanta."

Dell outsurce 100% of there laptops. :brokenheart:
**note: published before the IBM PC and Lenova merger.
source:
Hp, idc, Merrill Lynch
@
http://www.gen-x-pc.com/laptopmanu.htm

Um, welcome to 2005? Lots of manufacturers use ODM's.......

 

[inhotep]

Originally posted by: BrunoPuntzJones

Originally posted by: inhotep
To educate people about their laptops, so they don't get blinded.
This thread is really useful for people who is considering to purchase a laptop. You can?t learn about the laptop business in school.
Now people have more to consider, which can be good or bad.
If I get a $750 off of dell, I may consider buying it. However, I would make an educated judgement before buying, which is not implying to disregard dell/brand X, but to to consider more possiblities. You know what I mean?

Take it somewhere else. Maybe you don't realize that AT is a hardware website, you aren't telling anyone here anything they don't know.

Oh really.

 

[makken]

umm... so.. how is this a bad thing?

 

[WackyDan]

Sigh.... Crusade elseware.......

There are many members here WHO WORK IN THE INDUSTRY..... Spare the useless dribble for the people in your class.

 

[inhotep]

Originally posted by: WackyDan
Sigh.... Crusade elseware.......

There are many members here WHO WORK IN THE INDUSTRY..... Spare the useless dribble for the people in your class.

Well there are other people who find my threads helpful.

I looked at the 1st page of Mobile articles and what did I see? Dell, HP, Dell, Gateway, HP, Acer, voodoo, dell, dell, dell, IBM, Gigabyte, Acer.
What does this mean to you? Is this site made for people who know or people who don't know much? OR, they get paid to advertise, or they know people here only know the Name brands? Further more, why would they post articals that should be Known to many members here, who work in the industry? Answer me.

I worked in "the industry" as well and there are stuff I dono about.

 

[The Linuxator]

With respect to all in here, I think the OP is trying just to give info about who really manafactures laptops , alot ppl think that dell is a manafcturer, wrong dell is a plain old OEM that's all but I wouldn't call it the "industry's dirty secret" because there isn't much of a point for Sony for example to tell their customers that Foxconn does most of the work on the motherboard of a desktop per se becasue really Sony is the one doing all the replacements and support so there is no point really for them to notify customers about such detailed info. that's just one example from the Desktop industry. and it applies the same way to laptops.
But it really makes me laugh when somone calls DELL a manafacturer, you rarely find a company that is a manafcturer and supplier at the same time.
It's good to know about these underworld manafacturers but really for a usuall user / customer it doesn't make a difference.

 

[bearxor]

While it is good info, this has to be like the third time something like this has been posted in this forum since I started visiting this forum regularly (the SFF/Notebooks forum, not AT in general), which would be around 3 months.

 

[The Linuxator]

I think the issue is that ppl like Dell would like the average user to think that Dell actually makes the entire laptop, if customers started to find out that they are getting the same components from this OEM and that OEM it would do some damage to the name, but nothing more than that.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: inhotep
"Virtually none of the "Name Brand" manufacture their own laptops. The few notable exceptions are IBM, Acer, Toshiba, Twinhead and Apple. Yet, even Toshiba and Apple do not make all of their own. All of the rest buy their laptops from what is called an Original Design Manufacturer (ODM).
"ODMs are the true manufacturers who actually cast, and assemble the main unit which includes the motherboard, outside casing, and display. A few examples of ODMs are Quanta, Compal, Clevo, Mitac, Asus, AOPEN (Acer), Uniwill, and TwinHead-- perhaps you have never heard of these companies before. But you have definitely seen their systems under other well known brand names. ODMs are usually located somewhere in Asia, and may have distribution centers in the US. ODMs distribute their product to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). Each ODM sells its computers to several different OEMs."


"An ODM named Compal (not to be confused with Compaq) makes some of the the DELL, Hewlett Packard and Compaq line of laptops--plus some others.
Quanta makes many of the Dell Latitude, IBM, and Sony Vaio laptops."

"DELL buys most of their systems from Aopen (Acer), Compal and Quanta."

Dell outsurce 100% of there laptops. :brokenheart:
**note: published before the IBM PC and Lenova merger.
source:
Hp, idc, Merrill Lynch
@
http://www.gen-x-pc.com/laptopmanu.htm

1. Wouldn't IBM's have been outsourced, as Lenovo made them? Now that Lenovo makes and sells them, it's no longer outsourcing.

2. I've known Dell PDAs were made by some Chinese company for a while.

 

[Hacp]

Creative makes Dell Djs...

 

[WackyDan]

Originally posted by: Fox5

Originally posted by: inhotep
"Virtually none of the "Name Brand" manufacture their own laptops. The few notable exceptions are IBM, Acer, Toshiba, Twinhead and Apple. Yet, even Toshiba and Apple do not make all of their own. All of the rest buy their laptops from what is called an Original Design Manufacturer (ODM).
"ODMs are the true manufacturers who actually cast, and assemble the main unit which includes the motherboard, outside casing, and display. A few examples of ODMs are Quanta, Compal, Clevo, Mitac, Asus, AOPEN (Acer), Uniwill, and TwinHead-- perhaps you have never heard of these companies before. But you have definitely seen their systems under other well known brand names. ODMs are usually located somewhere in Asia, and may have distribution centers in the US. ODMs distribute their product to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). Each ODM sells its computers to several different OEMs."


"An ODM named Compal (not to be confused with Compaq) makes some of the the DELL, Hewlett Packard and Compaq line of laptops--plus some others.
Quanta makes many of the Dell Latitude, IBM, and Sony Vaio laptops."

"DELL buys most of their systems from Aopen (Acer), Compal and Quanta."

Dell outsurce 100% of there laptops. :brokenheart:
**note: published before the IBM PC and Lenova merger.
source:
Hp, idc, Merrill Lynch
@
http://www.gen-x-pc.com/laptopmanu.htm

1. Wouldn't IBM's have been outsourced, as Lenovo made them? Now that Lenovo makes and sells them, it's no longer outsourcing.

2. I've known Dell PDAs were made by some Chinese company for a while.

1. IBM's was subcontracted to a few different subs... LG was one of them. I know that in the case of LG, both LG and IBM co-owned the facility and the lines....... Lenovo had in the past, manufactured ThinkPads for IBM (lenovo owns 2 or 3 manufacturing subsidiaries), but wasn't at the time the sale of the PC division was announced. Now that Lenovo officially has the old IBM PC division(since may 1st), about half of ThinkPad production is done in house at Lenovo, and the rest is sure to move inside once they hit their refresh dates. ThinkCentre Desktops are made in Mexico.... Assume that to move as well. They've had quality issues.

 

[Sunrise089]

So what if they have the same manufacturer if they have different specs, designs, prices, and warranty's. The Lexus LS430 and the Scion xA are made by the same company, that doesn't mean there is a scam involved or that the Lexus isn't worth more than the Scion.

 

[Bateluer]

Ironically, Dell is still the other company to offer a Pentium M with either a Go 6800U or a Go 7800GTX. If I'm wrong about that, somebody please link me.