British firms: canny or cheapskates?

Chris Gallagher asks why British buyers appear to prefer lower-spec machines

If you ask a group of people to describe an incident, they generally all have a different take on it, even when they have all witnessed the same event. Similarly, different people have different attitudes to IT spending.

According to our statistical analysis of buyers, German and French firms typically invest much more in the specs of their machines than we do in the UK.

The high-end ultrabook typically costs €700 (£596) to €1,000, with MacBook Pros pushing the price band even higher. This category is expanding in Germany and France. But in the UK, where the notebook market is resurgent, we tend to go for lower specs.

And while we spend about €430 on a notebook, the French will spend €510 for a comparable machine. That is if they even buy a notebook, rather than a higher-spec ultrabook, which is preferred in both France and Germany.

Higher-spec machines may of course be expected to have a longer useful life.

This information can be interpreted in many ways, depending on your perspective. You could argue that it shows how short-sighted the British are. We skimp on the specifications, compromising on processing power, storage and memory, just so we can save a few dozen pounds. But this could be a false economy if businesses in Germany are getting twice as much use out of their machines.

The upfront price may be higher, but the cost is spread over twice as many months. Factor in the disruption that comes with each upgrade and surely the German buying model is more efficient than ours.

Italians are also prepared to invest slightly more in IT than we do. With our low-spec mentality and obsession with price, British businesses really are in the margins.

On the other hand, these figures could be interpreted entirely differently. Maybe the opposite is true. It could be that the German business user buys a machine that he or she intends to pass on to someone else after it has exceeded its useful life. Maybe the chief executive's ultrabook or notebook will be passed on to the security guard in reception. Maybe after 18 months, the power user will pass his or her machine on to his or her children.

In this respect, it could be argued that the behaviour of the British IT buyer is more canny. There will have been at least two generational changes in the families that produce Asus S400s, Lenovo ThinkPads and Apple MacBooks. Perhaps the British IT buyer is displaying more astute decision making. Why pay for the most expensive kit when you know it will be rendered obsolete in months?

This theory is lent weight by the fact that Samsung Chromebooks are most popular in the UK, according to a study we concluded last month. Could the relative success in the UK market of this cloud-friendly machine be related to the fact that Britain has the fifth-highest broadband uptake in the world?

It could be that British businesses are in this position because they enjoy the most efficient distribution networks - of both computers and broadband. In France and Germany, the distribution networks are not as finely tuned, so it is harder to make money on low-margin goods.

In Britain, by contrast, products are moved so economically that it is possible to make money on tiny margins. That can only be good news - can't it?

Chris Gallagher is UK channels manager at Context