High-end hunger dries up supplies

Manufacturers are struggling to keep up with a greater than expecteddemand for notebook PCs

A shortage of high-end notebook PCs has hit the channel, with some vendors unable to meet greater than expected demand.

Almost all of the major manufacturers have admitted to having problems fulfilling orders for multimedia portables, with Toshiba and IBM saying that lead times are running at around two weeks for some machines.

Compaq portable product manager Liz Harbord said that while Compaq was having some trouble meeting demand, the problems were not widespread.

'Generally, the picture is pretty good. Availability on the LTE 5000 range has been fine, although there may be difficulty in certain regions.

'Where there are problems it's because of the general shortage of supply of high-end notebook components. We're releasing a P150 notebook in the next couple of weeks and it will be readily available.'

Reports in the US press claim some vendors have been taking weeks, sometimes, months to supply high-end product.

Martin Hellawell, head of marketing at Computacenter, said the picture was bad for most vendors. 'IBM are particularly bad at the moment,' he said. 'Toshiba and Compaq have been a bit patchy. The reason for the problem is partly due to an unavoidable shortage of components, but many of the manufacturers have also been caught out by higher than expected demand for top-end machines.'

Big Blue's UK Thinkpad marketing manager, Peter Bragg, was quick to deny allegations of supply problems. 'I can't understand why anyone is saying they're having trouble getting Thinkpads. We're not aware of any problems with stock - in fact I'd say the opposite was true. Computacenter, SCC and Northamber are holding something like 4,500 Thinkpads between them at present.

'New stock may take a couple of weeks to deliver, but there should be no problems with existing stock.'