ITC champions 2023: Who leads the market?

Despite eco­no­mic fluc­tua­tions and the chal­lenges of infla­ti­on, which put pres­su­re on glo­bal mar­kets in 2023, the ITC indus­try demons­tra­ted remar­kab­le resi­li­ence. This is reflec­ted in the sta­ble demand for ITC pro­ducts on the ITscope platform.

According to the ITscope ana­ly­sis, B2B cus­to­mers are cle­ar­ly shif­ting their inte­rest towards fle­xi­ble pro­ducts such as tablet PCs and note­books, as well as the latest net­work equip­ment. “This deve­lo­p­ment is indi­ca­ti­ve of a shift within the IT indus­try,” comm­ents Oliver Gorges, Director Sales and Marketing at ITscope. “It illus­tra­tes how com­pa­nies are inves­t­ing in tech­no­lo­gies that sup­port a fle­xi­ble and effi­ci­ent way of working, for exam­p­le in hybrid working models.” Accordingly, inte­rest in PC sys­tems decli­ned noti­ce­ab­ly in 2023.

The cate­go­ry with the most clicks by far in 2023 was tablet PCs. The trend was alre­a­dy announ­ced in 2022, but the fact that the figu­res went through the roof is main­ly due to the exor­bi­tant­ly high num­ber of clicks for Apple iPads. These domi­na­te the cate­go­ry – even though Apple did not launch any new tablets on the mar­ket in 2023. The abso­lu­te favou­ri­te of ITscope users was the Apple iPad Wi-Fi, 10.2″. It was at the top of the cate­go­ry in every quar­ter wit­hout excep­ti­on and is the­r­e­fo­re the most popu­lar pro­duct in ITscope 2023. The solid tablet with a 10.2‑inch screen dia­go­nal is con­side­red user-friendly, intui­ti­ve and rela­tively inex­pen­si­ve com­pared to other Apple pro­ducts. The Wholesale sel­ling pri­ce (WSP) remains sta­ble at around 300 euros.

The lead of the “Tablet PCs” cate­go­ry com­pared to other cate­go­ries was par­ti­cu­lar­ly clear in the third quar­ter of 2023: In the autumn months, the top 10 tablets alo­ne raked in a whop­ping 28,592 clicks. Tablet PCs are also signi­fi­cant­ly more popu­lar com­pared to the pre­vious year: While the most popu­lar cate­go­ry pro­ducts in 2022 only recei­ved 62,899 clicks, the tablets cate­go­ry bro­ke the magi­cal hundred-thousand bar­ri­er in 2023 and achie­ved 105,242 clicks.

Notebooks secu­red third place in our annu­al ran­king. They achie­ved an impres­si­ve result with an avera­ge of around 20,000 clicks per quar­ter on the top 10 pro­ducts. The Lenovo ThinkPad L15 Gen 3 was cle­ar­ly at the top of the cate­go­ry. The mid-range note­book has a powerful Intel i5 pro­ces­sor with 4.4 GHz, an SSD with 512 GB and 16 GB RAM. The most popu­lar note­book among ITscope users recor­ded 20,678 clicks in 2023. Since autumn 2023, howe­ver, the note­book favou­ri­te has beco­me almost impos­si­ble to obtain and is now bare­ly in stock at Merchants, as Lenovo laun­ched the 4^th gene­ra­ti­on of the popu­lar note­book back in May.

In con­trast to note­books, who­se top 10 even impro­ved com­pared to 2022, inte­rest in PC sys­tems decli­ned signi­fi­cant­ly in 2023. Hybrid work­sta­tion models are in demand and the clas­sic desk­top PC is less sui­ta­ble. It is the­r­e­fo­re hard­ly sur­pri­sing that the num­ber of clicks in 2023 is signi­fi­cant­ly lower than in 2022.

The most popu­lar pro­duct in the cate­go­ry is HP’s Pro Mini 400 G9 with an i5 pro­ces­sor, which made it to fourth place among the top ITscope pro­ducts in 2023 with 19,979 clicks. As the name sug­gests, HP’s sys­tem is a true mini among PCs, but is still fast and very quiet. In fact, a look at the top 10 PC sys­tems is striking: Compact PCs in mini for­mat are beco­ming incre­asing­ly popu­lar. They can be con­ve­ni­ent­ly sto­wed behind the screen, take up litt­le space and can the­r­e­fo­re also be taken into the home office. However, manu­fac­tu­r­ers defi­ne the for­mat of their mini PCs dif­fer­ent­ly: the­re are flat, hori­zon­tal models on the mar­ket as well as slim, upright mini towers and com­pact cubes.

A clear trend emer­ged in the mobi­le pho­nes sec­tion of ITscope in 2023: click num­bers rose con­ti­nuous­ly with each quar­ter, with the fourth quar­ter in par­ti­cu­lar rea­ching a peak. This increase was main­ly due to the latest models from Apple, which recei­ved a lot of atten­ti­on on the plat­form. However, the most fre­quent­ly cli­cked mobi­le pho­ne on ITscope, with 10,789 clicks, is an older model, the com­pact iPhone SE (3^rd gene­ra­ti­on), which has estab­lished its­elf in the busi­ness world as a com­pa­ra­tively afforda­ble Apple smart­phone. There was no new edi­ti­on of the han­dy clas­sic in 2023, but rumour has it that a suc­ces­sor is being plan­ned for the end of 2024.

2023 was a year of cau­tious growth for the digi­tal indus­try despi­te a num­ber of chal­lenges. According to fore­casts by the mar­ket rese­arch insti­tu­te Context, a mode­ra­te increase to a trend rever­sal is immi­nent. “It was a chal­len­ging year for the IT sec­tor, as com­pa­nies were very reluc­tant to invest,” reflects Oliver Gorges. “However, the upturn in the fourth quar­ter and the posi­ti­ve fore­cast for the second quar­ter of 2024 give us con­fi­dence. Our aim is to sup­port the indus­try in this reco­very pha­se with our data and insights.”