Month-by-month growth for the office sector in the UK
GfK report gives mixed view of UK retail sector for IT and office.
The report, Insight into January 2013 UK Retail Durable Sectors, places printer cartridges in its office section of the market, with printers and MFPs in the IT area. Whilst overall sales for durable retail products declined 2.5 percent compared to January 2012, the office sector continues to decline, though IT saw a growth of 4.9 percent attributed to “strong sales of media tablets”.
For the period from February 2012 to January 2013, office saw a 0.7 percent growth in value to £1.7 billion ($2.56 billion/€1.96 billion), whilst IT saw a 6.2 percent growth in value to £7.6 billion ($11.4 billion/€8.8 billion), and in terms of looking at performance for the first two months of 2013 compared to the same in 2012, the office sector fell 5.8 percent in value to £200 million ($299.8 million/€230 million), whilst IT grew 4.9 percent, giving it a current period value of £700 million ($1.049 billion/€806 million).
Month-by-month growth for the IT sector in the UK
An interesting statistic showed that month-by-month both sectors have grown in terms of online sales, with office up 2.5 percent and IT a huge 25.3 percent. On a general sector basis in terms of growth, IT continues to enjoy growth, though admittedly not as high as a peak of 28 percent month-by-month seen in March 2012, but the office sector in stark contrast has not seen growth since August 2012, with an overall decline in the sector reaching highs of -7 percent.
In terms of justification for the results, GfK states that the IT sector “continued to perform well” due to media tablet sales, and in terms of the office sector earmarks “the continued decline of printer consumables” as “once again [causing] an overall decline for the sector” despite growth in other product areas.