Intel's Looking For A Whitebook Boost

"We are finally stocking clamshells [chassis] across all distributors," said Steve Dallman, Intel's director of Americas distribution and channel marketing. "It took longer to get ramped up than we thought."

Several system builders said thesupply in North America of Intel-validated whitebooks, initially launched in March, has been constrained, as have promised interchangeable parts such as batteries, power supplies and optical drives.

Dallman acknowledged that system builders have been complaining about supply but said he believes the issues are waning this month. In addition to improved supply, Dallman said Intel, Santa Clara, Calif., has authorized more distributors, including D&H Distributing. Intel originally launched the whitebook program with Synnex and ASI.

Though system builders complained that Intel has already ended its rebate on the mobile CPUs available with some of the chassis, Dallman said Intel is revisiting this. "Now that supply is in place, we are working on reinstating the rebate," he said.

Michael Schwab, vice president of purchasing at D&H, Harrisburg, Pa., said he believes two of Intel's partners in the whitebook promotion, Microsoft and Seagate, still offer discounts on the operating system and disk drives, respectively.

Whitebooks are a crucial category for custom-system players as customers continue to switch from desktop to mobile form factors. Top-tier vendors have capitalized on the transition with robust service and support options and aggressive prices, making it more difficult for system builders to grab their share of sales.

To help make whitebooks more palatable to small- and midsize-business customers, Intel is backing its whitebook program with a "verified by Intel" letter certifying the quality of the notebooks and validating that they support interchangeable parts. "That is part of the reason we started the program," Dallman said. "Verification ensures quality."

Intel is also providing first-level support for the models.

The second element of the program is the interchangeable parts. For solution providers, standardized components—LCDs, batteries, power supplies and optical drives—make managing inventory and servicing the whitebook models much easier, many in the channel have said.