For the seventh year in a row, Samsung has been crowned the leader among display vendors in the 2009 ARC survey, finishing first in 17 out of 18 criteria.
Samsung rival ViewSonic placed second in the 19-inch-plus Display Technologies segment, moving up from third place last year.
The win is also notable considering the scope of Samsung's channel program--there are 18,000 partners in the U.S. and 100,000 worldwide.
Doug Albregts, Samsung's recently installed vice president of sales and marketing, emphasized the company's commitment to its resellers, especially when it comes to handling channel conflict.
In an earlier interview with Channelweb's Steven Burke, Albregts said the company conveys one message to its partners, unlike some of its rivals.
"This will be a clear differentiator between us and the competition," he said. "We don't have a conflicting message. We are 100 percent focused on the channel."
The lone area that ViewSonic scored above Samsung--and just by a hair--was in managing channel conflict, in which ViewSonic scored 59.9 vs. Samsung's 59.7.
Outside of channel relations, Samsung garnered 96.9 points for quality and reliability, compared with ViewSonic's 86.6 points.
As far as the money-shot category, Samsung scored 74 points in terms of revenue and profit potential while ViewSonic had 65.2 points. In the ROI segment, the gulf narrowed: Samsung scored 69.7 points while ViewSonic had 64 points.
Other widely divided areas among the competitors included marketability--Samsung showed 80.2 points vs. ViewSonic's 67.3 points. A major gap was also seen in the postsales support segment, where Samsung snared 70 points compared with ViewSonic's 60.1 points.
