ITscope Market barometer Q3/2023

Karlsruhe, 19.10.2023 – The third quar­ter of 2023 brought a series of gloo­my reports from mar­ket rese­arch insti­tu­tes and the press: bleak fore­casts for the sale of PCs and desk­top moni­tors, the end of Fujitsu’s cli­ent busi­ness, and finan­cial los­ses for Samsung and AMD. In this mar­ket baro­me­ter, we ana­ly­ze how the­se inter­na­tio­nal trends are reflec­ted on the ITscope plat­form and, con­se­quent­ly, in the B2B busi­ness in the DACH region.

Recently, Context pre­dic­ted a tough year for the glo­bal moni­tor mar­ket. A look at the pro­duct clicks on ITscope con­firms that the hype around TFT screens seems to be over. The inte­rest in the top 100 moni­tors on ITscope signi­fi­cant­ly decreased in the third quar­ter of 2023. “The pre­vious wave of purcha­ses was dri­ven by the tran­si­ti­on to home and hybrid offices. Now, com­pa­nies are making the most of the devices they alre­a­dy have,” com­men­ted Benjamin Mund, CEO of ITscope.

The world­wi­de decli­ne in PC sales, as repor­ted by Gartner, is less pro­no­un­ced on ITscope: here too, the inte­rest in PCs is lower than the pre­vious year, but not as signi­fi­cant as inter­na­tio­nal­ly. “Compared glo­bal­ly, the busi­ness in Germany is more sta­ble, but still full of chal­lenges,” said Oliver Gorges, Channel Development Head at ITscope, an expert in the field.

The top pro­ducts in ITscope have also remain­ed sta­ble: For more than a year, the Apple iPad Wi-Fi, 10,2″ has been the most popu­lar item on the plat­form: The tablet recei­ved a total of 14,552 clicks in the third quar­ter. Two Microsoft Surface models came in second and third in the tablet cate­go­ry. It is not clear, howe­ver, what the sta­tus of the Surface pro­duct line is. Hardware blog­ger Caschy suspects that the Surface line will be com­ple­te­ly sca­led down. It almost seems as if Microsoft has given up the fight against com­pe­ti­tor Apple and its Macbooks. Read more in our note­books category.

In addi­ti­on to the tried and tes­ted IT pro­ducts, the­re are of cour­se also new pro­ducts on the mar­ket. The most popu­lar new pro­duct of the last quar­ter on ITscope is the ThinkCentre M70q Gen 3 from Lenovo, fol­lo­wed by the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti VENTUS gra­phics card, tou­ted as Nvidia’s first new gra­phics card for under 400 euros.

Highflyer: Hardware that inspi­res
TFTs: The inte­rest is waning
Notebooks: What does the future hold for the Microsoft Surface series?
PC-systems: International Trend in a Weakened Form
Mobile pho­nes: There’s no esca­ping Apple’s domi­nan­ce
Tablets: iPad ver­sus Microsoft Surface
Printers: HP takes the lead with an inkjet prin­ter at the top
Processors: Delivering High Performance at a Premium Price
Graphics cards: MSI GeForce models domi­na­te the market

Thanks to ITscope Highflyer, you’ll always know which new ITK pro­ducts are par­ti­cu­lar­ly popu­lar among sys­tem hou­ses. We show­ca­se the most popu­lar inno­va­tions in 30 cate­go­ries and take a clo­ser look at the lea­ders. The lis­ted artic­le pri­ces are based on the avera­ge dea­ler purcha­se pri­ce (HEK) from ITscope as of ear­ly October.

The most popu­lar new pro­duct of the last three months on ITscope and thus place 1 of the high­fly­ers is the ThinkCentre M70q Gen 3from Lenovo. The com­pact mini desk­top PC is a solid, powerful model and available for an avera­ge of €555 at Wholesale sel­ling pri­ce (WSP).

Place 2 goes to the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti VENTUS with 1,055 clicks, or as golem​.de says, “Nvidia’s first new gra­phics card for under €400”. The IT news por­tal attests the MSI GPU a very high effi­ci­en­cy in Full HD. The WSP of the gra­phics card in ITscope is 355 €.

On place 3 is again a Lenovo pro­duct, this time a note­book: The ThinkPad P16 Gen 2is a high-end device and comes with an Intel Core i7 pro­ces­sor with 2.1 GHz of decent speed. Notebookcheck attests to the lap­top­’s strong GPU per­for­mance. With an avera­ge WSP of €2,328, the device plays in the upper class. All the more impres­si­ve that the note­book still mana­ges 960 clicks on the ITscope plat­form.
The Gigabyte H610M mother­board with DDR4 RAM not only occu­p­ies place 4 in the high-flyers, but also made it direct­ly to the top posi­ti­on with 829 clicks in the mother­board cate­go­ry – and by a clear mar­gin. “The ran­king is well deser­ved,” says Alexander Stikel, IT Systems Engineer at ITscope. “Gigabyte offers up-to-date sockets for RAM and CPUs, sui­ta­ble for the 12^th, 13^th and, in the future, also for the 14^th Core gene­ra­ti­on – and at a reasonable price.”

With the UbiQuiti U6+, an access point from the American net­work device manu­fac­tu­rer has made it to place 5 of the ITscope high fly­ers. The Wireless Access Point, or WAP for short, pro­vi­des a sta­ble WLAN signal and has the same distinc­ti­ve cir­cu­lar design as its pre­de­ces­sors. Unlike this one howe­ver, it trans­mits via Wi-Fi 6, which allows poten­ti­al­ly fas­ter speeds.

The recent ana­ly­sis con­duc­ted by the mar­ket rese­arch firm, Context, pain­ted a bleak pic­tu­re for the glo­bal moni­tor mar­ket. Their stu­dy on the reve­nue growth of desk­top moni­tors in three regi­ons sug­gests an uncer­tain and unsta­ble future. A clo­ser look at the ITscope ana­ly­sis con­firms that the cra­ze for TFT screens has come to an end. While clicks in the second quar­ter of 2023 were simi­lar to the pre­vious year, inte­rest in the top 100 moni­tors on ITscope signi­fi­cant­ly decli­ned in the third quar­ter. The obvious assump­ti­on is that with the wide­spread return to the office, the­re is less demand for home office hard­ware. “The last major wave of purcha­ses was dri­ven by the switch to home and hybrid offices. Now, com­pa­nies are uti­li­zing the devices they alre­a­dy have,” com­men­ted ITscope CEO Benjamin Mund. “There is curr­ent­ly litt­le reason to upgrade to newer models. Since docking sta­ti­ons were inte­gra­ted into moni­tors, the­re have been no ground­brea­king inno­va­tions. For most appli­ca­ti­ons, 27 inches is suf­fi­ci­ent to work effectively.”

The Samsung ViewFinity S6 S65UA a screen with a cur­ved dis­play that is sup­po­sed to offer more com­fort than con­ven­tio­nal flat screens. Since Samsung announ­ced or laun­ched two new models of ViewFinity S6 moni­tors (S65UC and S65VC), the pri­ce of the S65UA has con­ti­nuous­ly decreased.

Lenovo also makes its way up the moni­tor charts, clim­bing from 158^th place to 12^th place: The ThinkVision T24i-30 is a 23.8‑inch FHD dis­play with IPS tech­no­lo­gy, pro­vi­ding a wide vie­w­ing field and offe­ring exten­si­ve con­nec­ti­vi­ty opti­ons, inclu­ding VGA, HDMI, DP, and a USB hub with four ports.

On ITscope, the Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 for Business can cele­bra­te suc­cess: it clim­bs from 176^th to 13^th place in the note­book cate­go­ry. The work­hor­se with Intel Core i7 pro­ces­sor and a clas­sy look also gets com­pa­ra­tively good reviews, for exam­p­le from GameStar Tech – howe­ver, the maga­zi­ne cri­ti­ci­s­es Microsoft for the high pri­ce. All in all, things are loo­king incre­asing­ly bleak for Microsoft’s Surface series, it almost seems as if Microsoft has given up the fight against com­pe­ti­tor Apple and its Macbooks: Heise is dis­ap­poin­ted by the medio­cri­ty of the new models and denies Microsoft the cou­ra­ge to expe­ri­ment. Microsoft’s press com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on on the Surface inno­va­tions also left much to be desi­red. Hardware blog­ger Caschy even suspects that the Surface line will be com­ple­te­ly sca­led down, as a lar­ge part of the niche and expe­ri­men­tal Surface items have been dis­card­ed. No less tel­ling is the fact that the face of the Surface brand, pro­duct chief Panos Panay recent­ly left the com­pa­ny.

Some new Lenovo note­books are gai­ning momen­tum, such as the V‑Series models Lenovo V17 G4 IRU 83A2 and Lenovo V17 G4 I3-1315U. Both vari­ants are rela­tively afforda­ble office note­books with a 17-inch screen. The high-end Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Gen 2 21FA is making waves in the cate­go­ry with a whop­ping 960 clicks, secu­ring the 16^th posi­ti­on. The updated work­sta­tion now fea­tures a GPU with Ada-Lovelace archi­tec­tu­re, more RAM, and an impro­ved display.

While Gartner, the mar­ket rese­arch insti­tu­te, repor­ted decli­ning sales figu­res for the glo­bal PC mar­ket, the decli­ne was less pro­no­un­ced in the German B2B mar­ket. The ITscope ana­ly­sis of the top 100 most popu­lar PC sys­tems com­pared to the pre­vious year shows that the inte­rest in PCs is lower in Germany com­pared to the pre­vious year, alt­hough the decli­ne is less pro­no­un­ced than inter­na­tio­nal­ly. Gartner’s ana­lysts pre­dict that the bot­tom has been rea­ched and that the busi­ness will pick up again next year. On ITscope, the click num­bers have also increased slight­ly in the last quar­ter, despi­te the sum­mer lull and holi­days. When com­pa­ring the per­cen­ta­ge dis­tri­bu­ti­on of annu­al clicks on PC sys­tems to the top 1000 pro­ducts on ITscope, the ratio remains rela­tively con­stant. Only in the first quar­ter of 2023 was the inte­rest in PC sys­tems less pronounced.

The best new ent­ry in the cate­go­ry, coming in at #4, is the ThinkCentre M70q Gen 3 by Lenovo – howe­ver, the pro­duct does not offer any real inno­va­ti­on, as it mere­ly replaces the pre­de­ces­sor model, which made it to 6^th place in our top list. The ThinkStation P360 30FA has also clim­bed signi­fi­cant­ly in the ITscope top list, from 162^nd to 17^th place.

In 12^th place is the Fujitsu ESPRIMO G6012 – pro­ba­b­ly one of the last models of the Japanese com­pa­ny on ITscope, becau­se Fujitsu is dis­con­ti­nuing its cli­ent busi­ness in Europe. Fujitsu’s exis­ting sup­port con­tracts will still be ful­fil­led until 2024. The ultra-compact mini PC with Core i5 pro­ces­sor has 8GB of DDR4 RAM memo­ry and has a total sto­rage capa­ci­ty of 256GB on the SSD. Windows 11 Pro is alre­a­dy pre-installed.

It is to be expec­ted that other manu­fac­tu­r­ers will enjoy increased inte­rest after Fujitsu’s exit, for exam­p­le com­pe­ti­tor Dell, which makes a new ent­ry into the cate­go­ry at num­ber 13 with the new Dell OptiPlex 7010. The com­pact PC is par­ti­cu­lar­ly sui­ta­ble for busi­nesses and can also be moun­ted on the back of a monitor.

Meanwhile, the smart­phone busi­ness does not look so rosy for Samsung: While Apple’s pri­ces remain lar­ge­ly sta­ble, Samsung’s are alre­a­dy fal­ling short­ly after mar­ket launch. The com­pa­ri­son por­tal Idealo pre­dic­ted this trend for the Galaxy S23 as ear­ly as January. A look at the ITscope histo­ry con­firms it: Instead of the ori­gi­nal pri­ce of €1,489, the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra is now available for a WSP of €865. Overall, the South Korean com­pa­ny is curr­ent­ly strugg­ling with pro­fit slumps due to over­sup­p­ly in the chip industry.

The pre­vious num­ber 1, the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M283fdwonly made it to 4^th place in the ITscope top list in the third quar­ter with 1,273 clicks. According to the tes­ters of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung this model is the best laser mul­ti­func­tion prin­ter ever. Also tes­ted by the FAZ was the Brother MFC-L2710DN, the third most popu­lar prin­ter on ITscope. In the FAZ eva­lua­ti­on, howe­ver, it only came in 14^th.

The second most popu­lar inkjet prin­ter on ITscope is a com­pa­ra­tively new model, name­ly the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-C5890DWF, in our cate­go­ry in 11^th place with 739 clicks. In the cur­rent test of inkjet prin­ters at Stiftung Warentest, the mul­ti­func­tion device from 2022 recei­ved a gra­de of 2.2.

Meanwhile, the third quar­ter of 2023 was tumul­tuous for AMD, with pro­ces­sor sales down by over 50 per­cent accor­ding to CRN. On ITscope, howe­ver, AMD pro­ces­sors are still going strong. Right up the­re, the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which makes it to second place in the cate­go­ry with 976 clicks. The popu­lar CPU does very well in the bench­mark cour­se from GameStar Tech. However, the tes­ters lis­ted as a short­co­ming that the AM4 plat­form, to which the pro­ces­sor is tail­o­red, hard­ly offers any upgrade opti­ons any­mo­re. Another top ran­king was achie­ved by the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, which PC Games Hardware prai­sed as “gam­ing king”. The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D also has upsi­de. AMD’s high-end model was poor­ly available at launch, but is now in stock at num­e­rous distributors.

The most expen­si­ve pro­ces­sor in the ITscope Top Ten is the Intel Core i9 i9-13900K (WSP 502 €). So it’s no gre­at sur­pri­se that various cases of fraud have beco­me public for this model of all things. Golem, for exam­p­le, repor­ted fake pro­ces­sors on Amazon, PC Games Hardware even repor­ted a CPU that was deli­ver­ed wit­hout a chip at all.

Also in third place is a new GPU, name­ly the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti VENTUS 2X, which PC-Games calls “The new 440 euro gra­phics card”. Currently, the GPU is pri­ced at a WSP of €356 in ITscope. Test reports are not con­vin­ced by the price-performance ratio of the GPU with only 8 GB memo­ry. PC-Welt is rather dis­il­lu­sio­ned by the per­for­mance, which is only enough for full HD gam­ing and PC Games Hardware recom­mends: “Wait for the 16-GiByte vari­ant!”.

Actually, Context reports that Nvidia has recent­ly fai­led to live up to expec­ta­ti­ons for gra­phics cards in the gam­ing sec­tion – at least if the hard­ware and soft­ware sur­vey con­duc­ted by gam­ing plat­form Steam in August 2023 is any­thing to go by.

Sylvia Schreiber
Durlacher Allee 73
76131 Karlsruhe
Germany

Tel.: +49 721 62 73 76 – 29
sylvia.schreiber@itscope.com
www​.itscope​.com

ITscope is one of the lea­ding plat­forms for IT pro­cu­re­ment and sales in the B2B sec­tor. It pro­vi­des valuable sup­port to sys­tem hou­ses, resel­lers, dis­tri­bu­tors, and manu­fac­tu­r­ers in their digi­ta­liza­ti­on efforts. One of the high­lights of ITscope is its quar­ter­ly publi­ca­ti­on, the ITscope Market Barometer, which offers intri­guing insights into the ever-evolving ICT indus­try. This includes iden­ti­fy­ing the most sought-after pro­ducts among B2B cus­to­mers and moni­to­ring the fluc­tua­ting purcha­se pri­ces of smart­phones, note­books, and pro­ces­sors. With its com­pre­hen­si­ve mar­ket ana­ly­sis, ITscope offers exclu­si­ve and valuable insights into the sales trends and mar­ket dyna­mics of the channel.