A few years ago desktop PCs were the commodity and laptops were the "high end", bought mainly by business people, so you could charge a premium for them.
Laptops were often "special" builds where many of the components had to be specially designed and made, and they had a short sale life. TFT prices were also high.
Now laptops are the commodity and many companies now make them so prices will be forced down.
I believe there are 3 or 4 Far East companies that make and assemble the "shell" (which includes laptop case, motherboard, screen etc).
Companies just buy the shell, stick on their company logo, install the software, and there you have it, a laptop ready to sell.
I think this is how many of the cheaper companies who sell through PC World and Curry's build their laptops (Advent for example).
The low end at the moment is a tad under �300 and I can it coming down.