26.1.2022 | Market analyses Notebooks, monitors and smartphones are the ITscope ITC champions 2021

Karlsruhe, 27/01/2022 - While in 2020 all signs were still pointing to hope and improvement for the coming year, it quickly became apparent that the coronavirus pandemic would remain the number one topic in 2021. The chip crisis posed a further challenge for many industries - and certainly didn't leave the ITC sector unaffected. "The chip shortage had an immense impact on the channel last year and will probably continue into 2022. We hear from the majority of our customers that they are struggling with delivery problems," explains Oliver Gorges, Head of Channel Development & Cooperations at ITscope. And this applies to almost all product categories: notebooks, monitors, printers, PC systems, servers, CPUs and graphics cards are particularly hard hit, according to a survey conducted by ITscope. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, it is precisely these devices that received the most clicks on the ITscope platform. Notebooks, monitors and smartphones in particular are among the most sought-after product categories of the year. This is still partly due to the COVID-19 crisis as well as the home office boom. However, in the case of PC systems, the chip crisis is probably more of an explanation for the upward trend at the end of the year - if the notebooks in question are sold out, then the alternative is to reach for a desktop PC system. "This result shows that with ITscope, we are optimally supporting our customers even in these challenging times. Our platform helps system houses get an overview of alternative products and sources of supply, including from the refurbished segment, in the event that other products are unavailable - and we are therefore contributing at least a small part in making the current situation a little easier for the IT channel," Oliver Gorges continues.

Quarterly click number development for top 10 products from selected product categories of the ITscope platform, Q1 to Q4 2021

Similar to 2020, the notebook category is in especially high demand: apart from a small dip in Q2, click numbers remained at a consistently high level and continued to rise towards the end of the year. With an average of 33,588 clicks on its top 10 products, the notebook category achieved the best result in the comparison of categories. Dell's Latitude 3510 particularly stands out as a winner, securing the title of ITC champion of the notebook category with a total of 21,942 clicks. Lenovo was still in the lead last year, but only made it to second place this time round with the ThinkPad E15 Gen 2 20TD (almost 16,000 clicks).

Dell's P2419H also performs incredibly well: with 33,485 clicks, this TFT monitor received an extraordinarily high number of clicks, which it completely deserved. Since the end of 2019, the extremely popular 24" LED screen has consistently secured first place in the ITscope market barometer's monitor category, and was also among the ITscope platform's yearly favourites in 2020.

Price/stock/status history and product click history for the Dell P2419H (Prod. No. DELL-P2419H), January to December 2021

The TFT monitor, which has been listed since 2018, even managed a slight price increase. After a peak in the first quarter, the Wholesale Selling Price (WSP) remained constant at around €110 for a long time, but then rose by more than 20% to €135 towards the end of the year - unusual and above all remarkable for a relatively old model! Monitors didn't do badly in comparison with other categories either, scoring an annual average of almost 32,000 clicks for top 10 products.

A graph similar to the previous categories can be seen for tablets, which started off the year with a remarkable result, dropped off a little in the summer months and then picked up the pace again towards the end of the year. On a product level, there is a neck-and-neck race between Apple's and Microsoft's tablets: the Surface Pro 7 entered the race alongside the 10.2-inch iPad - and the former is ahead by a minimal margin of 15,279 clicks compared to 14,731 clicks for the iPad, snatching the annual victory from under Apple's nose.

The year was also crowned with success for PC systems - especially for the ThinkCentre M720q 10T7, which is also one of the top products from 2021 at 23,542 clicks. And that's despite the fact that in Q3, the long-running favourite had to relinquish its place to a successor model, the ThinkCentre M70q 11DT - which only had a yearly total of 16,490 clicks though. Regardless of which exact model is number one, manufacturer Lenovo has something to celebrate.

And particularly exciting developments can be seen in the product categories of graphics cards and smartphones: while smartphones hovered at a lower level at the beginning of the year, graphics cards started the first quarter extremely well with the most top 10 clicks ever. But this result couldn't be maintained at this level for long: in our comparison of product categories, graphics cards had to leave the fourth quarter with the fewest clicks. However, at least the Quadro RTX 4000 8 GB GDDR6 was unaffected by this slump. With 10,548 clicks, the graphics card from PNY has the most clicks in this category and therefore deservedly belongs to the ITscope ITC champions 2021.

For smartphones, on the other hand, it's the other way round. After a comparatively weak start, things trended up sharply over the course of the year, and Q4 ended with 38,137 clicks on the top 10 products in the smartphone category. This is mainly thanks to the terrific success of Apple's iPhone SE - an unbelievable 36,276 clicks went to this particular device. Interestingly, this is not only the most clicks ever on a single product, but also corresponds to 42% of the total clicks for the top 10 smartphones in 2021.

Price/stock/status history and product click history for the Apple iPhone SE (Prod. No. MHGP3ZD/A), January to December 2021

The chart shows a significant uptick in clicks on the iPhone SE during the fourth quarter. The price also increased slightly towards the end of the year, rising from around €380 to over €400 in December. The iPhone 12 follows in second place with 7,025 clicks. Despite listing near the end of the year in September 2021, the iPhone 13 Pro has also made considerable gains and even made it into the top 20 of the annual charts with 2,391 clicks.

The ITscope ITC champions of 2021 (the product with the most clicks in a category) at a glance