Ideal ousted from Siemens monopoly

Midwich Thame eats into troubled rival's PC distribution contract.

Ideal Hardware has lost its solitary grip on Siemens' PC distribution contract, after the vendor signed up rival Midwich Thame last week.

Subject to the final agreement being signed, Midwich Thame will commence distribution of Siemens PCs and notebooks from 12 July in a contract worth, 'many millions of pounds'.

Nick Culley, business manager at Midwich Thame, told PC Dealer: 'We're proud of this one. We've wanted to develop our PC business for some time.'

He added that it was too early to determine whether the distributor would gain access to Fujitsu hardware following the merger of the vendors' European PC operations, but hoped to further down the line.

Alan Norman, marketing director of Siemens Computer Systems, declined to comment 'on an agreement that hadn't yet been signed', but said the vendor was looking to expand its UK distribution base, and would be making announcements to that effect.

Ideal, which has held the Siemens' franchise for the past three years, will also lose its monopoly on Siemens servers - Midwich's sister firm, Transformation Software, has made a bid for the higher end business.

The move comes a fortnight after Ian French, incumbent head of Ideal's executive board, criticised its sales force for not concentrating on high-margin business. Ideal is undergoing its second restructure in a year, and also issued a profit warning this month (PC Dealer, 16 June).

But Dan Petrovic, Siemens' product manager at Ideal, dismissed the idea that Midwich's appointment was a problem for the distributor, insisting the additional competition was healthy.

'We could be doing a lot more business than we do and this could stimulate us to that level,' he added. 'In fact, we had been expecting this for some time now.'

Midwich's contract with Siemens is its second foray into the PC market, after it signed up with Acer more than two years ago (PC Dealer, 17 February 1997).