Smartphones, webcams, communication devices and storage
products were the IT products most in demand by small and
medium-sized enterprises and home workers in the first half of this
year.
These users spent £3.9bn on IT products during the period, said
research firm GfK Group in its biannual UK Technology Barometer
report.
Products that support wireless technology and converged
communications are hot property among UK business, said GfK.
The research looked into the sales of business-to-business and
retail outlets as well as mail order IT suppliers. It tracked the
technology buying trends and sales performance across PCs,
hardware, monitors, communication devices and cards, printing
devices and consumables, peripherals, storage and boxed
software.
During the first half of the year, UK buyers bought PCs worth
£1,443m, printing devices and multifunctional devices worth £303m,
£343m of monitors, and hard drives and network attached storage
worth £130m. Communication devices accounted for £122m, and
software £239m.
Jean Littolff, business group director at GfK, said prices were
falling for commodity technology products. He said these price
reductions had been fuelled partly by bundled deals. So, for
example, a package of both a wireless router and a wireless network
interface card could sell for substantially less than the price of
a single router a year ago. GfK found that in some sectors, bundled
products accounted for as much as 45% of total sales.
Littolff added that the average notebook price had fallen from
£808 to £686 between the first half of 2005 and the first half of
2006, which has made them more attractive to businesses than many
desktop PCs.
Analyst firm IDC said that, in addition to the trends GfK has
drawn attention to, SMEs were buying more storage systems.
Dave Reinsel, director of storage research at IDC, said, "New
storage-demanding applications and more advanced storage strategies
by the SME sector are among the factors fuelling market demand for
storage capacity that is expected to grow by more than 50% annually
over the next several years."
The trend to device convergence
Businesses are increasingly turning to devices that provide
multiple functions, rather than technologies that serve a single
purpose, according to GfK Group's UK Technology Barometer
report.
Jean Littolff, GfK's IT business group director, said, "Not only
are we looking at convergence within IT sectors, but also a
blurring of lines between IT, consumer electronics and telecoms.
This long-standing trend is being realised in a substantial fashion
in 2006."
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