They don't buy a laptop but a seat for some amount of years. So they're guaranteed X amount of laptops for Y years.
The selling company is obviously going to min/max this contract as much as they can. You could order a bunch of laptops if you had the authority I guess, but it will not be making on to the network since that is under contract too (probably the same company)
I understand that's how they are used to operating, I just think it's stupid. I'm sure some beancounter likes everything nice, neat, and predicable but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. If your org has differing compute needs that are all subset/supersets of each other then cycle machines through your workforce (buy new and rotate down hardware to those who need less compute). If that's not possible or the number of people in each group are wildly different then suck it up as a cost of doing business and get the beancounters focused on how to write off as much of the machine as they can with depreciation.
The selling company is obviously going to min/max this contract as much as they can. You could order a bunch of laptops if you had the authority I guess, but it will not be making on to the network since that is under contract too (probably the same company)