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The gaming market waits for new Sony and Microsoft consoles

The gaming console and software market is stochastic – the success of the three platform players and the handful of software houses they licence enjoy rapid growth when a new console is released and a slowly decline in business in the quarters beforehand. In the second quarter of 2019 Nintendo is still enjoying the extra business in brought in when in launched the Switch. In the case of both Microsoft and Sony they are maintaining their business largely through software and upgrades to ageing consoles. Things will change significantly with the launch of their new products – most possible next year. Read more »

Mobile device market down 8% to $392b – what’s the next big thing?


The mobile device market is one of the largest in the IT industry. In the second quarter spending worldwide fell by 8% to $86.6b (as it did in the year to June – to $392b); unit shipments were down by 3% to 354m in the quarter and by 5% to 1.519b. The installed base stood at 3.5b at the end of June – 4% down on the previous year. Despite these falls, it’s staggering to think that this business is shipping computerised devices to the equivalent of a quarter of the world’s population on average, even there remain areas of the world in which penetration is relatively low. Read more »

Cloud services $246 billion and still growing at 25%

Cloud computing services continue to grow apace (see my Figure above for the quarterly size of the market by type since 2005). In the year to the end of June spending grew by 25% to $246b and in the quarter, by 39% to $72.4b. Read more »

Microprocessor chip sales $317 billion – highly profitable, but sluggish

In the year to the end of June 2019 the worldwide microprocessor chip market was worth a staggering $317 billion. Sales have been somewhat cyclical, with declines in the first two quarters of 2019 balancing the strong growth in 2018. She my Figure above for quarterly revenue and unit shipment growth by quarter since the beginning of 2011. Read more »

IBM Launches the z15 and LinuxONE III

Yesterday IBM launched the z15 mainframe and LinuxONE III. In this post I look at the new mainframe features and positioning, which – coupled with the pent-up demand the expectation of the new kit has created – will push sales up in coming quarters significantly. Read more »

IBM launches the DS8900F – 2,320k IOPS with encryption built in


IBM launched its DS8900F storage systems yesterday – high-end products which are designed to work securely and at very high speeds when coupled with its mainframes, although they could also be used with other suppliers’ high-end servers. Coincidentally it’s an all-flash device, although IBM isn’t making much fuss about that in the announcement. The launch coincides with the introduction of its z15 server, which I am also on this site. IBM’s storage division is constantly expanding its market into cloud, software and OEM business; this announcement is about securing its important customer base of Financial Services and Government organizations and winning back some of those who tie other vendor’s storage to its mainframes. Read more »

IBM hones its storage for hybrid multi cloud solutions


The adoption and spending on enterprise IaaS and PaaS services continues to rise (see my Figure for the leading supplier revenues on a rolling 4 quarter basis). The question is no longer ‘if’, but ‘how’ to use them effectively, which requires a lot of internal work to bridge the major differences in how these services work and are managed in comparison with traditional on premise enterprise solutions; IBM has continued to provide extensions to its offerings (both software and hardware) to make the process easier and make some money in the process in its latest announcements made today. Read more »

Europe ITC – €1.6T revenue, €160B net profit, 6m workers

The ITC market in Europe was worth €1.6 trillion in the year to the end of March 2019, with total net profit of €160 billion and a workforce of 6 million. Read more »

Europe ITC market – €2.1 trillion, 9% growth in 2021, but still falling behind

Europe is a continent of many nations, natural languages and currencies. Uniting it is an on-going project begun after the second world war to create stability and prevent it (specifically Germany and France) from being the origin of future global conflict. The EC and latterly the EU corralled countries together in a common trading block. The fall of communism led to an extension eastwards with large countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland and Bulgaria joining, giving millions of people the chance to share in the economic benefits. Read more »

Brexit uncertainty hits UK IT and comms spending


Nothings kills a market than uncertainty… and we’ve got lots of that in the UK following the referendum in June 2016 to leave the EU and the abject failure of the Conservative party politicians to deliver it. I want to share some of my research on IT and communications spending to show the result in this important part of the UK economy. My Figure above shows the growth rate of spending between Q2 2016 (when the referendum took place) and Q1 2019. Read more »

IBM 2019 strategy – running towards the hard things

 

IBM gathered a set of industry analysts together in Milan to discuss its strategy. Having made many announcements earlier in the year at its Edge conference, it chose not to cover much in the way of systems and software news; instead it drew a picture of how it’s helping its customers to leverage the newest technology to compete more effectively in a world becoming ever more ‘digital’. Read more »

Huawei at the centre of the global/national 5G battlefield


5G mobile communications will be faster, deeper and wider than 4G, enabling new applications and is being tested in many countries planning to deploy in the next few years. Huawei is the world’s biggest supplier of Service Provider networks and leading developer and supplier of 5G base stations used by mobile telco operators – ahead of European suppliers Ericsson and Nokia. In 2018 it signed 30 contracts and shipped 40k base stations in this new market. Read more »

Download the ‘Growth Opportunities in the OEM Landscape’ presentation

To download the pdf of the slides I used at the Service Industry Association’s 2019 Global Summit please give your name, email address and company name and then click the send button. Once the file name appears right click and ‘Save Target As’ to save the pdf to your device. Don’t forget to contact us for questions and comments.

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Lenovo battles HP for leadership of the $163b PC market

Lenovo claimed market leadership of the Q4 2018 PC market based on its shipments, which we estimate at 12.9m. However market shares are more typically based on revenues rather than units shipped and, although Lenovo beat it in Q4, HP was the leader for the year with a share of 23.2% verses its competitor’s 22.1%. Lenovo is atypical for a Chinese vendor, having built its business as much on acquisitions (of which IBM’s Thinkpad business was the largest) as manufacturing abilities. In fact the PC market is strangely devoid of the Far Eastern intrusions experienced in the mobile device market. My Figure above shows the annual unit shipment totals from the leading PC suppliers. Its interesting that Dell after privatisation has yet to use its leadership in the Americas to compete more strongly in Asia Pacific and EMEA. Read more »

Download the UK ITC market post-Brexit presentation

To download the pdf of the slides I used at IPExpo Manchester to discuss the effects of Brexit on the IT and comms market in the UK please give your name, email address and company name and then click the send button. Once the file name appears right click and ‘Save Target As’ to save the pdf to your device. Don’t forget to contact us for questions and comments.

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©ITCandor Limited – unauthorised copying of this content is illegal and will be rigorously defended by us through court action

IBM expands the Storwize 5000 family and multicloud storage attachments – April 2019



IBM’s storage division made a number of significant announcements yesterday. As in previous quarters I had the privilege of talking with a number of executives, this time including Eric Herzog (CMO and VP) and Carlos Fuente (Distinguished Engineer), who were able to present and answer my questions on their strategy and introductions. Read more »

Servers up 9% to $85b in 2018 despite self-built cloud system competition

The server market is growing, despite strong competition from IaaS and PaaS cloud services. In 2018 the market was worth $85b worldwide – up 9% on 2017, while unit shipments grew by 5% to 26m. Looked at over the long term (see my Figure above) the major change in the market came with the Credit Crunch in 2008, which was like a sling shot driving virtualization faster during the recovery than it would have been with out it. The dips in 2014 and 2016 demonstrated the stochastic nature of server purchasing – not only of the predominant Intel Xeon machines, but also of IBM’s z and Power systems. Customers delay their purchases in the quarters before new processors come on tap. Read more »

Storage sales $199b in 2018 – exponential capacity growth, increasing software control

The last few years have seen a massive drop off in the importance of traditional storage systems, culminating in the market leader (EMC) being acquired by Dell in 2015. Spending on hardware has dropped from $45b in 2011 to $33b in 2018 (see my Figure above). Shipments on the other hand have increased to reach their highest ever volume (907k) due to the introduction of cheaper arrays such as Dell EMC’s vxrack and vxrail and the growing use of storage software to improve the usability of installed arrays. Read more »

Huawei v Cisco vie for control of the $181b network market


The network market is one of the most vital of all ITC areas, as it enables the connection between devices in a world in which it seems everything is being computerised. Partially due to this important role as well as its beginnings in the telecoms world, it is one in which national suppliers are still battling for dominance. It is hardly surprising therefore that this market is being deeply affected by the growth of new nationalism and trade wars between the USA and China. My Figure above shows the 2018 market shares of the leading suppliers split between enterprise and (the much larger) service provider network markets. Read more »