Notícias

Distributors lose industry share in 2011
2011-08-31
According to the last Canalys report, the growth of the distributors does not match those of the rest of the industry. The Canalys IT Industry major vendor (Apple, Cisco, Dell, EMC, Google, HP, IBM, Intel, Lexmark, Oracle, Microsoft and SAP) grew revenue 18% worldwide on average in the first quarter of 2011. In comparison, the big four distributors (Arrow ECS, Avnet TS, Ingram Micro and Tech Data) managed 11%, with many smaller distributors faring worse than this. Distributors have blamed recent disappointing results on excess inventory, poor retail demand, sluggish sell-out and weakening economies. They have comforted themselves by making peer group comparisons where sales-out data shows "we are performing as well as the others, so please blame the market for our results, not us!" And while these reasons are valid justifications, Canalys argues that distributors need to see the bigger picture and realize that for the first time in a decade industry trends are conspiring against them.

According to the report, distribution thrived for the last 10 years thanks to rapid notebook and netbook adoption and the virtualization of the server room, with two-tier distribution at the heart of the routes-to-market for both B2B and B2C vendors. But the growth drivers of the industry have now changed. Mobility is still booming, but now on the back of smaller devices, notably smart phones and pads, which are more and more sold either directly or through service providers. The server and storage markets are healthy, driven by data center activity and cloud applications. On top of these industry changes, the world economic growth is mainly coming from economies beyond Western Europe and the US, where the top 4 distributors are at best weak, at worse absent (MEA, Russia, Japan, etc.) : in these countries, local distributors will outgrow them, with already some local giants like Merlion in Russia for example. All of these factors combined are set to cause headaches for distributor executives for at least the next two years. The report concludes with a list of recommandations for the distributors to follow, if they wish their growth to match the industry, one of which is to go East as soon as possible…

RIM selects Brightstar for seven African countries
2011-01-03
Telephony specialist Brightstar has expanded its distribution agreement with Canadian vendor Research In Motion (RIM) into Africa. Brightstar will leverage and expand its presence in Africa and begin distributing BlackBerry products to seven countries in the Sub Sahara Africa region : Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda. Through its distribution centers and staff in Nigeria and South Africa, Brightstar will initially distribute the BlackBerry Curve 8520 and BlackBerry Bold 9700 smartphones, in addition to BlackBerry software and accessories. The BlackBerry smartphones will be available from various network operators and retail outlets throughout Sub Sahara Africa.