Price hikes for Lenovo, Fujitsu and SonicWall - partners

Plummeting value of the pound continues to affect some vendors

Fresh IT vendor price hikes, some as high as 22 per cent, have arrived or are heading towards the channel, according to partners.

On a web page made by Softcat specifically about the price rises, the VAR outlined details of a number of price increases, which have happened off the back of the pound slumping following the Brexit vote.

The page claims that Lenovo is raising its UK prices for all products by 10 per cent from 1 December, adding that Fujitsu's prices on storage products rose five per cent from 1 November.

Meanwhile, according to an email sent to partners by Exertis - seen by CRN - SonicWall increased the prices of support and services for its fifth-generation TZ firewalls and Network Security Appliances (NSA) by 22 per cent from 1 November across EMEA. But the vendor insisted this is not to do with Brexit and instead is "standard end-of-product lifecycle increase".

SonicWall said: "We have made our resellers aware of this and multiple trainings and sales guides have been produced to help partners upgrade their customers via the SonicWall secure upgrade programme or FWaaS to move onto the sixth generation in a cost effective manner."

Fujitsu was immediately available to comment, and in a statement, Lenovo said:

"Like any global company we always take currency exchange rates into consideration in our pricing strategy. This is business as usual and part of the market conditions in which any international company operates. Any changes form part of our ongoing communication with our channel partners."

CRN exclusively reported last week that HPE is planning to raise prices again on 1 December, and Softcat's web page added they will be to the tune of between six and 12 per cent on all products.

In a statement HPE said: "HPE, like any other international company, adjusts prices based on exchanges rates and currency fluctuations. After careful consideration of the business impact of a strong dollar against the pound sterling, we may decide to make adjustments to our pricing."

Following the Brexit vote on 23 June this year, the value of the pound fell from $1.48 on the 23 June to $1.36 a day later. The pound slumped again at the beginning of October, hitting a 31-year low against the dollar when it fell to $1.22. At the time of publication, one pound was worth $1.24.

The new price increases follow an initial round of rises where HP hoisted its UK prices by 10 per cent and Dell increased its prices by eight or nine per cent. Lenovo raised its prices in the UK by 10 per cent on 1 August.

More recently, Microsoft announced that its prices for enterprise cloud services will increase by 22 per cent and its on-premise enterprise software by 13 per cent on 1 January. Apple also announced last month that prices are rising 20 per cent for UK customers.

Rupert Mills (pictured right), director of Krome, said the latest round of price hikes is not a surprise.

"The ones I saw from Lenovo were about 10 per cent. It is expected at the moment with the way the dollar rate is going. As far as I am aware all the vendors are re-hedging currently. The biggest ones we have seen have been Microsoft and Apple recently," he said.

"I think because everything is set against the dollar, so as long as the dollar continues to rise against the pound then we will continue to see price rises. The margins in hardware are so small that it has to be passed on to customers. The issue is that if a customer has a fixed budget to do a project and then the price goes up drastically, it will affect whether they can continue with that project."