Price drops hit VAR revenue
Computacenter predicts decrease in product turnover
Despite selling more PCs in the first half of 2004 than ever before, channel giant Computacenter expects a slight decrease in product turnover, as PC prices fall.
"In the UK, we have delivered a record number of PCs, helped by Microsoft XP deployments. But our product revenue will be lower than in the first half last year," said Mike Norris, chief executive of Computacenter.
For its financial year 2003 the firm posted a turnover up by almost 30 per cent on 2002. At the time Norris said growth would come through technical services and software upgrades in the UK.
More recently he said: "Our focus on offering a range of infrastructure services that complement our customers' in-house IT departments has enabled us to grow managed services revenue."
Shaun Frohlich, executive director at corporate VAR Teksys, said price erosion means it is virtually impossible to make money just selling PCs. "We sell services and projects and on the back of that we sell hardware," he said. "We want the services, but if we get the rest we will do it."
Frohlich agreed that XP deployments are contributing to increased demand. "Business for us is better than it has been for two-and-a-half years because of customers moving from NT to new Microsoft products," he said.