Shuttle To Produce Notebooks For Smaller Manufacturers

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At the CeBIT trade show in Germany last week, computer parts manufacturer announced they were making the big leap into manufacturing whole notebooks. However, don’t get your credit card out yet – Shuttle won’t be selling them to you. Instead, Shuttle will acting as the OEM and producing the parts for other computer companies.

It’s hard for small and medium-sized computer manufacturers (think, Bob’s Computer Shack down the street from you, not Dell) to get into producing notebooks. Shuttle will be producing notebooks for these small manufacturers with desirable options and affordable rates. Like any good OEM, they have customizable options and will allow the OEMs to put their own logos and names on the notebooks.

Shuttle will be making notebooks between 10- and 17-inches. They’ll allow you pick between any processor, chipset or graphics solution that you want. In fact, it sounds like the clients will have almost total control over their notebooks, as long as you order more than 500 units.

Clients who order notebooks from Shuttle will be able to offer options like design, logo, battery size, webcam, and even 3G connectivity. Shuttle says they can ship anywhere you want, worldwide, which is really nice for growing companies.

Why are they doing this? Shuttle wants to standardize notebook motherboards. Intel pretty much created the standard for IBM clone PC desktop motherboards in the early 1990′s, but the notebook scene has been uncharted and wild, with many manufacturers building their own motherboard designs. As I wrote about in January, Shuttle unveiled their SPA standard to attempt to reign in notebook motherboard designs. As you guessed it, all of the Shuttle OEM notebooks will use their new SPA standard.

No word on when you can expect these Shuttle notebooks in stores – but, if everything goes to plan, you probably won’t know you’re on a Shuttle-made notebook.