Irish businesses and consumers will spend almost €540m on PCs this year, a new forecast from iReach claims. This outlay represents 23pc of the total technology spend in Ireland over the next 12 months.
Ed O’Malley, analyst with the Dublin-based IT research company, said: “There will be a large spend on PC replacements and many new users will respond to low-price milestones. 2006 will bring many changes and innovations in hardware and software, centred around an extremely competitive, rapidly advancing technology market with a focus on offering services, servers and storage that carry wider margins.”
The iReach findings suggest that consumer mobile PCs have reached an “optimal” price point. O’Malley suggested that ‘unit’ demand will continue at a strong pace even though prices appear to be stabilising. The end result of all this movement is that new users and replacement buyers look set to purchase new machines earlier than had been expected.
Research conducted by iReach last year showed that 74pc of the 17-25pc age group have access to a home PC and O’Malley said that this number is likely to increase as PC prices fall in 2006. Low-cost and portable PCs will continue to fuel the PC market next year, iReach added.
In the business market, Intel-based servers dominate computer hardware purchase. According to iReach, companies will focus on ways to improve the return on capital outlays for these servers.
Recent figures from iReach put Dell as the leading PC supplier to the Irish corporate and government market with 44pc market share; HP is next with 20pc followed by Lenovo on 17pc.
By Gordon Smith
