Seeing Partner Satisfaction From a New Point of View

To get an idea of how competitive the display-technology market has become, note that the Annual Report Card category has had three different winners in the past three years: NEC-Mitsubishi beat out longtime ARC winner ViewSonic in 2002, which was shooting for an unprecedented sixth consecutive win. This year, the field was even more competitive; Philips, for example, posted respectable scores for its first ARC entry, while technology giant Sony once again finished last. But the real story is Samsung, which swooped in to win the category this year and post the highest scores in the 2003 VARBusiness ARC.

DisplaySearch, a flat-panel display technology research firm, reports that while desktop monitor shipments fell worldwide in the first quarter of 2003, LCD monitor shipments rose 8 percent sequentially (quarter to quarter) in the first quarter of 2003 and reached a record high of 10.6 million units for a 37 percent share of the total display market. In particular, Samsung's line of SyncMaster TFT LCD monitors helped power the company to victory this year.

"We started getting demo units from Samsung, which were very helpful," says Earl Harvey, owner of VAR Harvey and Associates, Laramie, Wyo. "Now we're doing all our monitor sales in LCD. All my clients are switching from CRTs."

During the past year, Samsung has worked to rebuild its channel business by offering juicy incentives for solution providers, among other moves; those efforts and the company's exemplary flat-panel LCD technology helped Samsung sweep the category and beat all competitors in every sub-category and contest criteria.

"We simply rededicated ourselves for the peripherals market covering displays, printers and storage to sharpen the focus on solution providers and resellers," says Rey Roque, Samsung's vice president of marketing.