Only four suppliers survive NSW notebook cull

Just four manufacturers - Acer, HP, Lenovo and local box-builder ASI Solutions - will get the chance to sell notebooks to NSW agencies as the result of a government supplier cull announced today.

The notebook supplier contract, which started in 2001, will no longer let agencies choose from a former list of 11 companies. Vendors which missed out include Optima, Pioneer, Todaytech, Dell and Toshiba.

Optima chairman, Cornel Ung, downplayed the fact that his company had missed out.

"We're mainly in the education market. So the impact will not be so great," Ung said. "It's not that significant."

Pioneer Computers operations manager, Jeff Li, said he was disappointed but would not be losing too much sleep over the announcement.

"It's for cheap notebooks - there's no margin," Li said. "But we were surprised we were not there. We believed we had the best product and the best price."

Li said that Pioneer was looking forward to the other panel category announcements, which would also happen soon. The vendor was hoping to pick up something in one or more of them, he said.

Lenovo sales manager, Phil Cameron, was pleased the company had made the cut.

HP, Acer and ASI were not available for comment at press-time.

For more on this story, see next week's ARN.