The online channel expanded 21% in Q1, 2011. Philips enters top 10, explained by the rise of LED TVs and other CE categories

Icecat.biz Quarterly Update: Q1 2011

The online channel expanded 21% in Q1, 2011. Philips enters top 10, explained by the rise of LED TVs and other typical Consumer Electronics categories in the online channel. Dell enters the top 30. Nokia is the biggest shaker. Tablet PCs are not a killer of notebooks and netbooks. HP again market leader in notebooks market, Acer falls further behind.

Online channel expands in Q1-2011 with 21%
The online channel as measured by Icecat has expanded in Q1-2011 with 21% year-on-year in terms of Data-sheet Downloads (DDs) via more than 14,000 online channel partners. The number of connected channel partners has grown with 28%. These partners were downloading more than 200 million data-sheets in Q1-2011, and are expected to download more than a billion data-sheets during the whole of 2011.
The number of brands monitored has expanded year-on-year at a faster rate with 64% to 4028 and the numbers of sub-categories has increased with 13% to 1032 in the sectors IT, Telecom, Consumer Electronics and Office supplies. It basically means that the long tail of brands active in the online channel has increased much faster than the online channel itself, implying that the online competition between brands has surged dramatically.

Philips enters top 10 and DELL enters the top 30 in Q1-2011
HP, Lenovo and Acer still form the top 3 of online channel brands in the Icecat monitor for Q1-2011. No big surprise. More interesting is the dynamics lower in the top 100. The four bigger brands that do relatively well are Philips entering the top 10 (+64%), LG and Symantec entering the top 20 with both 65% growth in channel exposure, and finally DELL growing with 101% and entering the top 30. DELL's progress – though still significant – seems to be loosing gear somewhat. With the current speed a top 20 position is possible in the next year, but a top 10 position may take at least another year.
The fastest growing brands in the top 100 are, however, Ricoh (+380%), Advanced Cable Technology (+308%) and Verbatim (+185%). Ricoh's relative progress can be explained by an increased focus on the online channel. ACT is doing well, in line with the growing importance of cable accessories in the online market as a cross-sell. Verbatim is a successfull storage supplies brand, discovering the online channel as an efficient means for its sales ends.

And the shakers in the online channel are...
The shakers in Q1-2011 top 100 are: Nokia (-38%), Projecta (-36%), Nikon (-34%), Microsoft (-29%) and Intel (-29%). Nokia suffers from a general decline in interests in its products as it is rapidly loosing market share to Android-based smartphones, Blackberries and the Apple iPhone. Also Projecta and Nikon clearly seem to loose general market share, also reflected in the online channel. Relevant for Microsoft is that it's already a while ago that a new PC operating system is introduced, which always causes a temporary increase in online visibility. Finally, Intel's footprint in the online market has never been very strong as it mainly relies on OEM sales, not on box sales. The same goes for Microsoft, actually. Still, the strong decline is too significant to ignore for both ambitious tech companies.

Tablet PCs are not (yet) outperforming Netbooks
Constantly, we read in the press that Tablet-PCs are putting Notebooks, Netbooks and ordinary PCs under pressure. Is that true or is it just the usual journalistic dramatization and an easy excuse for CEOs of underperforming computer companies? According to our market data, the latter seems to be closer to the truth: the online interest in Notebooks is still expanding (+27%) close to an average pace, and Netbooks (+58%) are performing relatively even better than Tablets (+48%). Only PCs are clearly stagnating (+8%) and actualy relatively in decline as they perform below average. As the competition for Tablet PCs by channel brands is just taking off, it may be too early still to witness any lasting effects.

Notebooks, PCs and warranties still form the categories top three in Q1-2011. Nothing has changed there. The most signifcant changes in relative category popularity in Q1 2011, compared to the same period one year earlier, are the continued rise of cable locks (+586%) to secure mobile computer products, and the sharp decline of PDAs (-24%) and projection screens (-25%). Smart phones and smart boards are killing the latter two categories.
Most notable are the rise of typical consumer electronics categories like LED TVs (+569%), refrigerators (+119%) and LCD TVs (+103%). The rise of such CE categories explains the relative good performance of the typical CE-brand Philips. It's unknown what the future will bring in this respect as Philips recently closed a TV-outsourcing and joint-venture deal with the Taiwanese producer TPV Technology.

HP leads in Notebooks, Acer falls further behind
HP (37%) has regained in Q1-2011 its dominance in the notebooks category, the most import category in the online channel. Runners up are Toshiba (15%) and Lenovo (14%). Surprisingly, the once leader of the pack, Acer, has been dwarfed into a forth position (10%). The pressure on its market position in notebooks, must explain the disappointing results of this Taiwanese manufacturer who put the blam on the rise of Tablet PCs, but that is only a tiny factor as Tablet PCs is hardly hampering the notebooks market. Tablet PCs are like Netbooks just another form factor, useful for presentations, but not useful for document processing and data-entry, serious office work in other words.

For the full report go to Icecat.biz Quarterly Update: Q1 2011