Channel Best-Sellers: Peripherals That Matter

UPSes

The competition among UPS device makers remains one-sided with American Power Conversion still the market's 800-pound gorilla. But this year, Hewlett-Packard picked up a full percentage point of sales-volume share over the last 12 months.

Yes, HP still has only 1.4 percent of the total sales volume, as measured by the NPD Group/Distributor Track, quite a ways behind APC's 81.3 percent sales volume share. But HP's gain beat APC's 0.4 percentage point gain. And it's a step up from earlier this year when it didn't even break into the top five.

One reseller said the increase is largely due to the HP brand. "If you, the customer, are going to be more comfortable seeing HP servers, HP storage, HP printers—why not HP UPSes?" said Jon Mirkes, corporate sales vice president at Camera Corner/Connecting Point, a Green Bay, Wis.-based solution provider.

APC, nevertheless, remains very popular within the channel. "APC certainly does have its name out there," said Kris Domich, principal consultant with Dimension Data, a global IT services and solution provider. Domich said APC has done a good job developing efficient power conversion products and integrating its UPS products with server cooling technologies.

Tripp Lite picked up 0.3 percentage points in the last 12 months for an 8 percent share of the sales volume. Third-place Powerware, however, lost 0.8 percentage points, for a 2.6 percent sales share, while fourth-ranked IBM lost 0.7 percentage points, with a 1.7 percent share.

-- Rick Whiting

UPSes 1st half 2007 Market Share Market Share Change 1st half '07 vs. 1st half '06 American Power Conversion 81.30% +0.4 Tripp Lite 8% +0.3 Powerware 2.60% --0.8 IBM 1.70% -0.7 Hewlett-Packard 1.40% +1.0 * Ranking based on 1st half 2007 share of sales dollar volume. Highlighted vendor gained greatest share from 1st half 2006 to 1st half 2007 Source: The NPD Group/Distribution Track (Incudes GTDC Data), www.npd.com/lps/distributortrack