Sales through distribution went down to 4.1 percent year-on-year in the first three months of this year.
The figures come from research group CONTEXT, which found that channel figures showed growth fall in Germany by 2.9 percent; in the UK by 1.6 percent; in Poland by 1.7 percent; in Switzerland by nine percent; and in Finland by 8.4 percent. CONTEXT attributed the reduced figures to “declining Apple revenues”, affecting for example Germany, Poland and the UK.
In contrast, strong growth was recorded for the first quarter in Italy, with 13.4 percent; Spain with 16.6 percent; Sweden with 25.9 percent, the Czech Republic with 22.3 percent; and Denmark with 20.6 percent. “Impressive growth” was also registered in the datacentre, networking and security category, rising by 14 percent, while networking systems grew by 17 percent.
Desktop computing sales growth fell by four percent, while software and licenses also dropped, by seven percent. HP took a significant blow to sales, with desktops dropping by 20.7 percent, mostly among SMBs, while its growth fell from six percent for 1Q2014 to just one percent for the first quarter of 2015. Lenovo saw growth decrease from 45 percent to 37 percent, maintained “thanks to strong notebook sales and mobile computing growth”, which was recorded at 41 percent.
Microsoft held on to its four percent share in channel revenue, despite a drop in growth from 14 percent to four percent compared with last year. This was helped by a 267 percent “boost” from tablet sales, while OS and app sales went down. IBM growth fell by 14 percent “thanks to plummeting server sales”, an area in which Lenovo’s channel revenue share has gone up, from less than one percent to 3.4 percent for the first quarters of 2014 and 2015 respectively.
Meanwhile, Apple’s growth halved from 37 percent to 18 percent, owing to a fall in retail tablet sales, although its revenue share went up from 11 percent to 12 percent from last year. Overall tablet sales declined 17.7 percent year?on?year, falling in Germany by 14.5 percent; in Italy by 14.8 percent and in France by 20.4 percent. Unit growth for iOS and Android fell by 19.9 percent and 21.7 percent respectively, while Windows tablets grew 114.6 percent. PC sales by distributor grew 13.8 percent in 1Q2015. This was driven by notebooks, rising 23.2 percent, such as 2?in-1s, “with consumer and budget notebooks in particular driving growth”.
Business PC sales grew seven percent, with low?end notebook space supporting the figure. Imaging continues to decline, by two percent, although the UK and Spain bucked this trend because of MFP growth, with increases of seven percent and 12 percent respectively. Large-format displays experienced sales growth of 23 percent, with TV sales at 39 percent driving a 12 percent growth in the display market.
HP and Samsung are contesting the majority revenue share, with 17 percent and 15 percent share respectively, with Dell “some way behind” on eight percent. Nonetheless, the latter’s share has grown 99 percent year?on?year.
The recorded country split for year-on-year PC unit growth rates has the UK on top with a growth of 32.4 percent; followed by Spain with 27.2 percent; France with 23.1 percent; and Italy with 12.1 percent. Germany however saw a fall of 0.9 percent and Switzerland a fall of nine percent.