SME & CONSUMER NEWS
Servers are still suffering as standards replace specialists....
EUROPE
SERVER sales are set for another poor year, actually several years of non-growth in both sales numbers and value. HP was the leading vendor in EMEA in 4Q09 and for the full year 2009. According to IDC’s EMEA Quarterly Server
Forecast, server revenue will pick up slightly in 2010 as the market recovers from the recession in 2009. IDC expects a modest increase of 2.4%, set against the weakest server figures recorded by IDC in 2009. Customer revenue is not expected to return to pre-recession levels, which peaked at $19bn
(€14.4bn) in 2007, during the forecast period. EMEA server revenue CAGR for 2009-2014 is expected to be almost flat, weighed down by 2009 figures, at 0.3%, and with shipment CAGR of 4.9%. “The overall economic environment is picking
up after a prolonged recession,” said Nathaniel Martinez, director of IDC European Systems and Infrastructure Solutions. “The fourth quarter 2009 marked the definitive turn to industry standard technologies, and corporate clients that were typically customers of enterprise servers will be considering x86 technologies.” Standard servers will continue to replace
....but France takes lead in PC growth
FRANCE
POSITIVE signs for Europe’s PC markets have emerged from the latest PC channel figures for the first quarter of 2010, reports specialist IT market research company, Context. Out of the three biggest European markets,
France is the leader, with a 23.8% growth rate on Q1, far ahead of Germany (11.7%) and the UK (11.5%), although UK was leading in the previous quarter. Overall, “The first quarter is looking good,”
commented Context co-founder, Jeremy Davies. “Units sales of PCs through Europe’s sales channels were up 16% compared to the same period a year ago. The best news is that revenues moved out of negative territory for the first time since the end of 2008 and were up 10%, while average selling prices stopped dropping and held steady at €443.” Notebooks is still the fastest growing segment,
sme round-up
David O’Meara, Managing Director of Irish software firm Havok, is leaving the company in June. Havok, who joined from Intel seven years ago, is leaving to pursue other business interests.
Ovum’s new mobile application developer survey found 60% of mobile developers are using or plan to use Google’s server-side APIs when building applications, leaving the mobile operators behind at 25%.
Stuart Hopper has joined the company as its new Director of EMEA Channels at PGP Corporation, a specialist in enterprise data protection. Hopper will be responsible for leading the channel programme and team in EMEA as the company looks to expand its footprint across the region. He joins the
30 APR 2010
team alongside Oliver Carter, the new Senior Channel Manager for Northern Europe.
WatchGuard Technologies has a new ‘Red Instead’ competitive trade-in programme that offers free WatchGuard XTM multifunction firewalls and WatchGuard XCS messaging security appliances to businesses that replace competitive unified threat management (UTM) firewalls or spam/content security appliances.
Computer 2000, the UK arm of Tech Data,
has underlined its commitment to driving growth for its partners and customers with two key senior marketing appointments: Alice Smitheman moves from her current role as UK Marketing Director for Computer 2000 to take up the newly-created and strategically important post of Azlan Marketing Director.
The second sees old channel hand Andy Dow re-join the company as Marketing Director for Computer 2000.
Q1 Labs, a global provider of security intelligence solutions, has announced a major push into the European market with the establishment of a new European distribution, R&D, sales and support centre and new senior management staff in the UK, France and Germany.
Storage specialist Data Robotics has signed VAD SQP to distribute its entire range in France, Spain and Italy. SQP, one of the larger storage distributors in France, will distribute Data Robotics’ portfolio, The latest deal with SQP will complement agreements made with existing distribution partners.
11
specialist devices. “Hardware based on x86, coupled with virtualisation and software management and automation, will become an increasingly appealing proposition to corporations that were historically buyers of non-x86 systems,” said Beatriz Valle, IDC research analyst for European Systems and Infrastructures Solutions. Central and Eastern Europe saw a much more
pronounced revenue drop than the rest of Europe last year, at 14.3% year on year. Across Europe, Unix is dropping away rapidly, and now has 27.3% of total sales, suffering an annual decline of 24.7%.
www.idc.com
led by France (26.9% on Q1-10), and followed by Germany (17.4%) and the UK (14.1%). Desktops is also a growing segment, much faster in France in Q1 (23.1%) than in the UK (3.6%) and Germany (2.1%), but a good news still if you look at the three negative previous quarters both in France and even more in the UK. The servers’ growth however is led by the UK,
with an 11.5% growth on Q1, and followed by France (2.9%) and Germany (2%), strongly contrasting with the three double-digits negative growth in all regions in the three previous quarters. And regarding the workstations’ growth on Q1, UK is the only country to show positive growth (13.4%), but is likely to be quickly followed by Germany (-8.2%) and France (-18.5%), whose declines in the last quarters have stopped dropping and even slightly started to rise.
www.contextworld.com
DSGi streamlines
UNITED KINGDOM
With the prospect of US newcomer Best Buy’s new stores opening soon, DSGi has continued streamlining. It has closed its Techguys Mansfield repair centre and laptop repairs are now going to be outsourced to Mercom. It has already reduced staff, staff hours, hubs
and warehouses, and is preparing a marketing blitz when Best Buy opens as the two companies will have flagship stores in the same shopping centre in Thurrock. Best Buy in Thurrock in May will be followed by Hedge End near Southampton and Merry Hill in the West Midlands expected in June. The store in Aintree near Liverpool will open
following those stores. It will be opening a store in Croydon, Surrey which is expected in the autumn of this year.
www.dsgiplc.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32