There is actually a chance that they might be, considering not all models are available in all regions, thus there are models that are marked for South-East Asia. So as a manufacturer, it's relatively easy for them to be biased.
That said, vendors in South-East Asia have a history of being scammers and taking out original parts and replacing them with cheaper hardware, so that could be a cause too, and HP might be innocent.
We heard about HP and Dell doing that, and ONLY in the version they shipped to India or South-East Asia (Do they ship worse components there?)
> I wish I was skilled enough to contribute to the project
There is a very high chance that you are skilled enough, to be honest.