Laptop Industry – Parts Shortage

In light of the delays that are affecting Dell’s XPS M1330, PC World is running an article, Laptop Industry Faces Parts Shortage. They talk about shortages in LCD displays (LCD TVs have taken off sales wise) and small hard drives used in both notebooks and iPods and the like (I’m guessing 1.8″ hard drives to be certain). That’s on top of the huge battery recalls that have been ongoing over the past year or two, coupled with the huge demand over the past several months (back to school plus Intel’s Santa Rosa platform launching).

They point out that this current shortage is unlike most that the industry has faced in the past.

Excerpt from the article:

What normally happens during a component shortage is that PC vendors will adjust the makeup of the notebook PC to find savings elsewhere and ensure a constant price for users. For example, using less DRAM (dynamic-RAM) memory in a laptop can reduce the cost a tad, to make up for a higher priced laptop battery.

This time is a little different because there are shortages of several key components.

Demand for new laptop computers is far greater than predicted so far this year, and companies are scrambling to keep up. At the same time, the industry is trying to cope with component shortages caused by other factors.

Now they don’t explicitly mention the Dell XPS M1330 (nor do they mention other laptops by name/model), but considering the LED-backlit displays seem to be a big part of the delays, and considering that other laptop makers are pushing LED-backlit displays out, it’s probably fair to say that it’s tied into all that. Whether Toshiba’s Dynabook SS RX1 as well as Panasonic’s R6 Jet Black Edition are suffering from parts shortages is hard to say, since they haven’t provided details.