IT & Office: Heavy decline from first quarter slows down in second quarter

During the second quarter of 2016 the IT and Office Equipment market decreased in value by only -0.5%, to reach a closing value of €460m.

IT: Recovery supported by peripheral and mobile computing segment

Within the IT categories, we noticed following trends during the second quarter of 2016:

• The value of mobile computing increased significantly thanks to the computing tablet products’ success and the growing interest for gaming notebooks amongst an increasing number of private customers.
• Helped by the different sport events, categories such as video-projectors and large screen monitors performed outstandingly.
• Unfortunately the media tablet category keeps on losing momentum because of lack of demand and new technologies and designs. 
• Strong growth figures keep on coming from the peripheral categories especially products for gaming purposes, network and smart home connectivity and solid state storage products.  On average the peripheral categories grew by over 10% in value during the second quarter of 2016.

Office Equipment and Consumables: poor results due to increased digitisation

In Q2 2016, the Office Equipment and Consumables sector recorded a decline in turnover by -11%, compared to Q2 2015.

Both in the hardware devices category and in the cartridges segment, the market demand dropped significantly.  Because of an ever increasing digitisation of documents and information, customers are less inclined to invest in printing solutions.

Alain Brys - Consultant IT & Office Equipment

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