“In Romania, unlike many other countries in the region, the public sector still accounts for a lot of the IT market and so do the multinationals with a local presence,” Anja Monrad, head of Dell’s operations in Central and Eastern Europe, told ZF.
The local small and medium-sized enterprise sector has been growing, as well, and this is where Dell sees its biggest development potential in the country, Monrad says.
In Poland and Israel, the largest markets in the region for Dell, the SMEs and the large local companies have a greater contribution to the business environment than multinationals.
Computer sales in Romania rose by 28% to 781,000 units last year, driven by the economic growth, by customers moving away from tablets to PCs, by Microsoft campaigns and by changes in how the market research company IDC calculates market figures. The local market leader is Lenovo, with a 25% share.
After going private in 2013, Dell has focused on developing a portfolio of ‘end to end’ IT solutions to cover the entire range of IT products and services a company might need. Dell therefore sells both hardware (servers, desktops, notebooks and tablets) and software solutions.
The business-to-business segment current generates more revenue than the consumer segment for Dell in Romania.
The priority of the company is to provide full solutions and only Dell and HP do that on this market. Dell definitely wants to be number one in Romania, Anja Monrad said. Dell’s market share in this country is lower than in other countries in the region.
The US company also seeks to gain market share on the consumer segment of the local computer market.
PC sales dropped worldwide and implicitly in Europe in the first quarter. Global PC sales stood at 68.5 million units in January-March 2015, the lowest in six years, according to IDC data.
The entire European economy is negatively affected by the political difficulties and by the appreciation of the dollar, which influences budgets calculated in local currencies. The entire IT industry is tied to the dollar. The market will stabilize in a quarter, but the quarter when big changes occur makes a negative impact on everyone: companies postpone investments waiting to see where the dollar goes, the Dell representative explained.
The local IT market has been affected by the stronger dollar, as well, which gained 10% on the leu in the first quarter alone.
Under the circumstances, the IT market is seeing a significant consolidation process, both globally and in Europe.
If one looks at the market in terms of market share, the top three players gain ground and all the rest are losing. As a result, the number of companies is decreasing but those that remain are getting stronger, Monrad said.
The same thing is happening in the region, where HP, Lenovo and Dell are gaining market share, while competition is losing it. Other competitors on the Romanian PC market are Acer and Asus.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)