Tablet market opening up for resellers
Traditional IT resellers poised to play more pivotal role in commercial tablet market as it matures, claims IDC
The traditional IT channel is poised to begin playing a much more important role in the supply of commercial tablets, according to IDC.
Talking to CRN, Marta Fiorentini, senior research analyst at IDC EMEA Personal Computing, predicted that traditional IT resellers will strengthen their role against telcos as the commercial tablet market matures.
According to recent research by IDC, the commercial tablet market in western Europe (including 2-in-1s) is set to more than double to 11 million units by 2019 as more businesses roll out tablets with a view to increasing employee productivity.
Fiorentini predicted that traditional resellers, which have until now been shut out of the market by direct-selling vendors and telcos, are poised to grab their fair share of the spoils.
"As the market matures, we also expect the channel structure to mature and to more closely resemble the model that PCs follow," she said.
"This is especially true now that the PC vendors, such as HP, Lenovo and Dell, are increasing their presence in the tablet market and will start to rely on their PC channel structure."
In October, IDC published its Western European Multi-client Study Tablets in Enterprise: The Big Opportunity (October 2014) exploring the factors that influence which supplier firms choose when buying tablets. It questioned 406 UK firms. Other than price and compatibility with existing platforms, the three most important factors were found to be whether there was an existing relationship in place, whether the supplier was a global solution provider, and whether they had support and services capabilities.
"All these elements lead in the direction of strengthening the channel in the commercial space," Fiorentini said.
"The channel partner will have an edge [over telcos] as we expect that, as companies have a more developed strategy when it comes to mobile devices, purchasing tablets will happen in a more structured way and through somebody who provides different platforms."