Despite the financial crisis, the growth of the online channel in Q3-2009 was around 9.5% year-on-year, based on a measurement of 121.2 million data-sheet downloads (DDLs) via ICEcat.biz by 7919 ecommerce sites in the world . The strongest online channel brand, HP, saw its brand share reduced to 28.1% in Q3-2009, compared to 34.5% one year earlier. This is consistent with the developments in the first year half of 2009. It is partly explained by the increase of measured online brands (from 1326 to 1638 year-on-year), but mostly by tough market conditions for the sales of its computers and HP seems to take a hit in specifically notebooks.
The most notable rising online channel brands are Adobe (2.7%), Asus (2,3%) and Cisco (1,9%). Strong performers are further Philips (1.9%), Samsung (1.9%), Lexmark (1.5%) and Symantec (1.1%). Toshiba (2.3%), Lenovo (2.3%), Belkin (2.0%), IBM (2.0%) and Epson (1.6%) saw their brand share relatively going down.
The most surprising development is actually the consistent long-term development of Asus towards the top of the computer league. Asus' current level of visibility in the online channel, will sooner or later result in a similar sales out share. Another trend is that software vendors are performing well, although Microsoft suffered from its Vista troubles. In Q4, we will be able to see if Windows 7 is able to lift Microsoft's brand share as normally the introduction of a new flagship product does.
Another brand to watch is DELL: it is steadily deploying its channel strategy, and has just entered the top 100 in Q3 (position 98, was position 387 in Q3-2008).
In Q3, the downward trend of the most important category - notebooks - is continued: now 9.7% share (down from 12.4% in Q3-2008). This can only partly (~0.3%) be explained by the rise of the low-cost netbook with a factor 4 (from 0.1% to 0.4%). In this light, it is still remarkable that netbooks are already widely hailed as saviour of the computer industry. Yet, the growth contribution next year will become significant. A more important explanatory factor for the downturn in notebook computers though, is the recession, and growing unemployment in the West, resulting in less investment in work place equipment. Relatively more dramatic is the downturn with regard to servers (1.8%, down from 3.8% one year earlier).
In line with the first six months of this year, warranty & support extensions stay a top 3 category. It is clear that the online sales channel has understood that margin can be made by actively X-selling such services. Interesting is the growth in antivirus & security software, DTP software, imaging software, and software licenses/upgrades in general. Security continues to be a major concern for companies and private persons. And clearly more IT budgets are spent on upgrading existing infrastructures, incl. upgrading existing hardware with new hard disk drives in stead of replacing them with new computers.
As notebooks are the single most important online category, it is important how this category is divided. The top brands in notebooks are all represented in the overall top 10: HP, Toshiba, Acer, Sony, Lenovo, Asus.
Thanks to its entry into the indirect channel, DELL has entered the top 15 notebook brands as well for the online channel. It can be expected that DELL will continue to expand its online channel position at the current rapid speed of about 400% annually. In that scenario, it will take three years before DELL will be a serious contender for a top 3 position in this category.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
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