Best-Selling Products Of 2009

The following slides represent the top-selling product SKUs through distributors in each of 19 product categories from January 2009 to December 2009, as reported by NPD Group. Keep in mind that some vendors often have many SKUs for a similar product, while others offer only a few choices, which helps boost sales for that more common SKU.

The telecom category includes telecommunications-related hardware such as PBXes, telephone systems or telephony equipment. Cisco Systems' IP Phone 7942G was the top-selling SKU in 2009, according to NPD.



The model includes a 5-inch graphical monochrome grayscale display, a two-port Cisco Ethernet switch that allows for a direct connection to a 10/100Base-T Ethernet network through an RJ-45 interface with single LAN connectivity for both the phone and a co-located PC. Eight of the top 10 best-selling SKUs in this category were members of Cisco's 7900 family.

Cisco's 3845 Integrated Services Router features wire-speed performance for concurrent services such as security and voice, and advanced services at full T3/E3 rates; increased density through four high-speed WAN interface card slots; and support for more than 90 modules. The 3845 bested another Cisco router, the 2811 Ethernet Router, for the best-selling SKU in this category last year.

This model is the 11th generation of Seagate's hard-drive family and features a 32-MB cache and SATA 3-Gbs interface. Seagate edged out a 300-GB Hewlett-Packard drive for the top-selling SKU last year and the company had four models in the top 10, according to NPD.

The IBM TS1040 is an LTO Ultrium 4 Tape Drive that provides up to 120 MBs native, up to 800 GB native physical capacity per cartridge, or 1,600 GB with 2:1 compression, with an Ultrium 4, 800-GB cartridge. IBM had three of the top four best-selling models last year, according to NPD, and IBM edged Hewlett-Packard for overall dollar volume share in tape drives.

HP's LaserJet P4015N prints up to 52 pages per minute and has up to 1,200 x 1,200-dpi resolution, 128 MB of standard memory and a 540MHz processor. With more than 60 percent dollar volume share, HP also had the top 10 best-selling SKUs in this category, including two other P4015 flavors.

Like the monochrome category, HP thoroughly dominates the color laser market too. HP garnered 56.7 percent market share and also had the top 10 best-selling color laser SKUs in 2009 as well.

This 19-inch monitor was the top-selling SKU in the 19- to 30-inch category last year according to NPD. HP edged a 24-inch Samsung Syncmaster display for the top spot and had five of the top 10 best-selling displays in this category. The L1950g has a .29 pixel pitch with 1,280 x 1,024 resolution at 60Hz.

This 32-inch display features a 3,000:1 contrast ratio and 178-degree viewing angles with native 1,366 x 768 resolution. Samsung earned 52.5 percent dollar volume share in this category and had five of the top 10 best-selling SKUs in 2009.

Fujitsu captured 48.5 percent market share in this category in 2009 thanks in large part to the Fujitsu fi-6130. This model scans 40 pages per minute in monochrome and grayscale and 30 pages per minute of 300-dpi color, according to the company. Fujitsu had nine of the top 10 best-selling document scanner SKUs in 2009 through distribution, according to NPD.

The SUA1500RM2U unit provides management of the UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) through a USB port and gives higher application availability by correcting low- and high-voltage conditions without using the battery, according to APC. The company had the top 10 best-selling SKUs in this category in 2009 and garnered 79.5 percent of the dollar volume share through distribution, according to NPD.

Western Digital's My Book Essential edged out two other WD products, a 500-GB My Passport Essential and a 1-TB Elements drive, for the top-selling external hard drive of 2009. The 7,200-RPM drive helps small businesses and departments quickly and securely back up vital data.

This server helped IBM maintain its slim overall market share in the blade server market. The HS22 features 2.53GHz Intel Xeon QuadCore E5540 processors, up to 96 GB RAM and other options to support virtualization and enterprise applications.

HP captured nearly 60 percent of the dollar volume share of desktops sold through distribution in 2009, so it's no surprise that the company would have the top-selling SKU sold last year. That honor goes to the dc7900 model that included a 3GHz processor, 160-GB hard drive and DVD +/-RW drive.

Although Apple finished fourth among vendors in dollar volume market share in the notebook category for 2009, it takes the honor for having the best-selling notebook SKU through distribution, according to NPD. The MacBook Pro's success is likely due to the fact that Apple typically offers far fewer SKUs than the other companies with more market share, including HP, Panasonic and Lenovo.



The Apple MacBook Pro (MB990LLA) features a 2.26GHz processor, 160-GB hard drive, DVD+/-RW drive and a 13.3-inch screen.

This appliance delivers security services with Active/Active high availability and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity for midsize enterprise networks in a modular, high-performance appliance, according to Cisco. With four Gigabit Ethernet interfaces and support for up to 100 VLANs, businesses can deploy the Cisco ASA 5520 into multiple zones within their network.



Cisco SKUs accounted for the top 10 best-selling network security hardware products.

Features of Check Point's VPN-1 Power gateway include integrated firewall, VPN and intrusion detection with accelerated security up to 12 Gbps. The unlimited user license was the top-selling SKU in 2009, with 50-user and 25-user SKUs also cracking the top 10.

Version 4.0 of Norton 360 was just released in February, but the 3-user version of 3.0 was the top-selling security suite SKU through distribution last year, according to NPD.



Norton 360 2.0 also placed in the top 10 best-selling SKUs, but 3.0 edged out Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 (3-user edition) for the top spot.

SQL Server 2008 placed five different versions in the top 10 best-selling relational database SKUs for 2009 and a SQL Server 2005 also cracked the top 10. So it's no surprise that Microsoft earned more than 50 percent dollar volume share through distributors last year.

Symantec's Veritas accounted for the most total market share by vendor in this category, but the Extended Edition of Tivoli Storage Manager was the top-selling SKU.



The Extended Edition expands on backup, restore and archive abilities and runs on Windows, HP Unix, z/OS, Linux, Sun Solaris and AIX. It also has NDMP backup for NAS, data de-duplication and Advanced tape library support -- greater than four drives or 48 tape slots, features not found in the regular edition.

As is the case in some other categories, IBM had the best-selling SKU but wasn't the biggest vendor in terms of dollar volume share. IBM sells far fewer SKUs than some competitors. Symantec's Veritas group had the biggest share overall and many more SKUs than IBM, including six of the top 10 best-selling SKUs.