GTDC Survey: What's Hot In Distribution

During a recent Wall Street tour, the Global Technology Distribution Council, which represents IT distributors, revealed some interesting findings in a study targeting rising vendors and growing technologies. For example, the dollar volume of IT hardware sales increased nearly 11 percent year-over-year from the period between March 2004 and February 2005. Among the strongest hardware growers were notebook computers, which saw a 22.5 percent increase in sales. The top vendor for the category was Acer, which upped its distribution sales more than 100 percent. GTDC president Tim Curran says Acer's distribution strategy, which focuses on offering resellers competitive pricing, has made the company a hit first in Europe and now in North America.

Other hot products for distribution included 802.11g wireless technologies, which jumped nearly 104 percent year-over-year to $252 million in the United States alone, thanks to high-growth sales from Cisco, D-Link and Enterasys. Another growing technology, according to the survey, was e-mail security software, which rose nearly 132 percent. Curran says formerly fast-growing products, such as flat-panel displays and digital cameras, are coming down in price and profit margins, but are still strong areas. As for up-and-coming vendors, one of the biggest growers was EMC, which saw its distribution sales increase 84 percent to $82 million for the 12-month period.

"[EMC CEO] Joe Tucci has really embraced distribution as part of EMC's midmarket strategy," Curran says. Other vendors that are making noise in distribution include StorageTek and Enterasys, as well as smaller players, such as Logitech and Lexar Media.

"A lot of new vendors are coming to distribution with an open mind about how to best work with distributors," Curran says.