With thin client systems growing at 13 per cent per annum IT vendors would be Wise to take notice says IDC.
Looking at the thin client market over the next four years, a recent IDC study shows that while the market for thin client devices was only 59,000 units in 2004 growth in firms adopting the technology and increased acceptance by Australian CIOs looks set to propel the market forward.
Over the last few years there has been a lack of understanding about thin clients amongst IT managers, however this is now being overcome as organisations are becoming more mature and intelligent with their IT budgets and find it difficult to overlook the inherent ROI that a thin client device environment offers, says IDC.
“The thin client market has continued to post growth rates that most hardware vendors would salivate at the mere mention of. Despite this market growth only one vendor effectively saw growth during 2004,” said Michael Sager, IDC Senior Analyst for PC Hardware.
The local market is dominated by Wyse as it gained over 15 points in market share from 2003 and almost single handedly drove growth in the thin client device market. Hewlett Packard was able to maintain in second position despite decreasing by almost 7 per cent in terms of market share. Ironically, rounding out the top three was Sun Microsystems who finished with 4 per cent share of the local market.
The forecast through 2009 has the market shipping over 126,000 devices with a CAGR of 13 per cent from 2004. Comparing these figures to the PC market forecast shows that there is expected to be almost one thin client device for every ten commercial desktops sold in 2009.
“What is truly amazing about the growth in the market during 2004 was that it was effectively spearheaded by a lone vendor. The economic, geographic, and organisation dynamics of
Top 5 Vendor Market Share
Wyse 80.5%
HP 8.1%
Sun 4.4%
VXL Instruments 2.7%
Maxspeed 1.1%
(Others 3.2%)
Total 100.0%