Will there ever be actual interoperable standards for laptops (or, for that matter, tablets and phones)? Desktop PCs are by far one of the lowest-margin products in the tech industry, even for integrator prebuilts that are 2-4 times the price of rigs handmade from retail parts (let alone cobbled together from eBay pulls). All thanks to standardized form-factors like ATX and ITX, which not only ensure parts from different brands are compatible, but that smaller parts from the same standard are compatible with bigger form factors.
We've all heard the excuses about "muh 10% thicker and heavier", but does anyone seriously think laptops that were dozens of times cheaper (not to mention easier to fix and upgrade) wouldn't absolutely crush them in sales? The real reason is obviously the massive profits, which (aside from a genuine desire for mobility from consumers, in spite of the fact most laptop use is at home or work) I strongly suspect to have incentivized a broad conspiracy by the industry since the mid-'90s to downplay and destroy desktop PCs as a viable product. Integrators (Dell, HP, Apple, LG, Asus, etc.) aside, though, all it would take is for component manufacturers like Via, MSI, Corsair, Gigabyte, ASRock, AOpen, and the like to draw up and endorse a set of standards, allowing them and numerous upstarts to flood the market with extremely cheap laptops and components.
Right now, while the only retail laptop components that are standardized to the point of interoperability are mostly inherited from desktops (drives, DIMMs, AC adapters), most other components (screens, backlights, battery cells, PSUs, wireless modules, antennas, touchpads, keyboards, hinges, cameras, speakers, mics, etc.) are all quasi-standardized through initiatives like Intel CBB to the exact degree necessary for OEMs to save money through economies of scale, without actually being interoperable for consumers (perhaps the most blatant example of this is the MXM GPU daughtercard "standard"). Actual standards would merely have to specify a tiny bit of fittings to sand off gratuitous incompatibility in such components, then add hierarchical specifications for different sizes of lids, cases, and mobos.
Even devices that are more integrated, like cellphones and tablets, would benefit enormously from having industry standard interchangeable batteries, cases (not hipster padding, I mean the actual chassis), screens, mobos, and such. This would be more practical than ever, given the uniformity of iPhone-esque touchscreen designs.