ITscope Market barometer Q3/2023

Turbulent times in the ITK business: These hardware bestsellers stand their ground.

The ITscope Market Barometer Q3/2023 is here! In this edition, we provide you with an overview of top sellers and newcomers in the IT market in the first quarter of the year. This time, we analyze eight different categories on ITscope.

ITscope Market barometer Q3/2023 as a PDF

The ITscope market barometer is based on ITscope GmbH’s own analysis.

Karlsruhe, 19.10.2023 - The third quarter of 2023 brought a series of gloomy reports from market research institutes and the press: bleak forecasts for the sale of PCs and desktop monitors, the end of Fujitsu's client business, and financial losses for Samsung and AMD. In this market barometer, we analyze how these international trends are reflected on the ITscope platform and, consequently, in the B2B business in the DACH region.

Recently, Context predicted a tough year for the global monitor market. A look at the product clicks on ITscope confirms that the hype around TFT screens seems to be over. The interest in the top 100 monitors on ITscope significantly decreased in the third quarter of 2023. "The previous wave of purchases was driven by the transition to home and hybrid offices. Now, companies are making the most of the devices they already have," commented Benjamin Mund, CEO of ITscope.

The worldwide decline in PC sales, as reported by Gartner, is less pronounced on ITscope: here too, the interest in PCs is lower than the previous year, but not as significant as internationally. "Compared globally, the business in Germany is more stable, but still full of challenges," said Oliver Gorges, Channel Development Head at ITscope, an expert in the field.

The top products in ITscope have also remained stable: For more than a year, the Apple iPad Wi-Fi, 10,2" has been the most popular item on the platform: The tablet received a total of 14,552 clicks in the third quarter. Two Microsoft Surface models came in second and third in the tablet category. It is not clear, however, what the status of the Surface product line is. Hardware blogger Caschy suspects that the Surface line will be completely scaled down. It almost seems as if Microsoft has given up the fight against competitor Apple and its Macbooks. Read more in our notebooks category.

In addition to the tried and tested IT products, there are of course also new products on the market. The most popular new product of the last quarter on ITscope is the ThinkCentre M70q Gen 3 from Lenovo, followed by the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti VENTUS graphics card, touted as Nvidia's first new graphics card for under 400 euros.

Content

Highflyer: Hardware that inspires
TFTs: The interest is waning
Notebooks: What does the future hold for the Microsoft Surface series?
PC-systems: International Trend in a Weakened Form
Mobile phones: There's no escaping Apple's dominance
Tablets: iPad versus Microsoft Surface
Printers: HP takes the lead with an inkjet printer at the top
Processors: Delivering High Performance at a Premium Price
Graphics cards: MSI GeForce models dominate the market

Highflyer: Hardware that inspires 

Thanks to ITscope Highflyer, you'll always know which new ITK products are particularly popular among system houses. We showcase the most popular innovations in 30 categories and take a closer look at the leaders. The listed article prices are based on the average dealer purchase price (HEK) from ITscope as of early October.

The most popular new product of the last three months on ITscope and thus place 1 of the highflyers is the ThinkCentre M70q Gen 3 from Lenovo. The compact mini desktop PC is a solid, powerful model and available for an average of €555 at Wholesale selling price (WSP).

Place 2 goes to the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti VENTUS with 1,055 clicks, or as golem.de says, "Nvidia's first new graphics card for under €400". The IT news portal attests the MSI GPU a very high efficiency in Full HD. The WSP of the graphics card in ITscope is 355 €.

On place 3 is again a Lenovo product, this time a notebook: The ThinkPad P16 Gen 2 is a high-end device and comes with an Intel Core i7 processor with 2.1 GHz of decent speed. Notebookcheck attests to the laptop's strong GPU performance. With an average WSP of €2,328, the device plays in the upper class. All the more impressive that the notebook still manages 960 clicks on the ITscope platform.

The Gigabyte H610M motherboard with DDR4 RAM not only occupies place 4 in the high-flyers, but also made it directly to the top position with 829 clicks in the motherboard category - and by a clear margin. "The ranking is well deserved," says Alexander Stikel, IT Systems Engineer at ITscope. "Gigabyte offers up-to-date sockets for RAM and CPUs, suitable for the 12th, 13th and, in the future, also for the 14th Core generation - and at a reasonable price."

With the UbiQuiti U6+, an access point from the American network device manufacturer has made it to place 5 of the ITscope high flyers. The Wireless Access Point, or WAP for short, provides a stable WLAN signal and has the same distinctive circular design as its predecessors. Unlike this one    however, it transmits via Wi-Fi 6, which allows potentially faster speeds.    

Check out the top 20 newcomers with hot-seller potential - our Highflyers:

TFTs: The interest is waning

The recent analysis conducted by the market research firm, Context, painted a bleak picture for the global monitor market. Their study on the revenue growth of desktop monitors in three regions suggests an uncertain and unstable future. A closer look at the ITscope analysis confirms that the craze for TFT screens has come to an end. While clicks in the second quarter of 2023 were similar to the previous year, interest in the top 100 monitors on ITscope significantly declined in the third quarter. The obvious assumption is that with the widespread return to the office, there is less demand for home office hardware. "The last major wave of purchases was driven by the switch to home and hybrid offices. Now, companies are utilizing the devices they already have," commented ITscope CEO Benjamin Mund. "There is currently little reason to upgrade to newer models. Since docking stations were integrated into monitors, there have been no groundbreaking innovations. For most applications, 27 inches is sufficient to work effectively."

Despite stormy times, one monitor in particular is still doing very well, namely the Dell P2422H,which gets 5,554 clicks this quarter - for comparison, last quarter it was viewed 6,033 times. In the top tier, the 24-inch LED screen now gets company from its own ranks: Its big brother with a 27-inch screen Dell P2722H makes it to second place in the category.

Also notable is the rise of HP's new, 5th generation E-series monitorsnsuch as the HP E27 G5, 6N4E2AA#ABB LED monitor, which went straight into the top 10 most popular monitors on ITscope in Q2 2023. The 24-inch variant, the HP E24 G5,even makes it to number 6 in the category.

The Samsung ViewFinity S6 S65UA    a screen with a curved display that is supposed to offer more comfort than conventional flat screens. Since Samsung announced or launched two new models of ViewFinity S6 monitors (S65UC and S65VC), the price of the S65UA has continuously decreased.

The WSP trend for the Samsung ViewFinity S6 S65UA has been decreasing since June 2023.

Lenovo also makes its way up the monitor charts, climbing from 158th place to 12th place: The ThinkVision T24i-30 is a 23.8-inch FHD display with IPS technology, providing a wide viewing field and offering extensive connectivity options, including VGA, HDMI, DP, and a USB hub with four ports.

Notebooks: What does the future hold for the Microsoft Surface series?

With notebooks, there is still no way around the Lenovo ThinkPad L15 Gen 3 21C3 past, it remains by far the most popular product in the category with 4,662 clicks.

Meanwhile, two up-and-comers from Dell are the Dell Latitude 3540 - Intel Core i5 1335U notebook and the slightly more powerful Dell Latitude 5540 - Intel Core i7 1365U model. The latter is an upper mid-range business laptop and features an Intel Raptor Lake processor and a bright, matte super-low-power display with FullHD resolution. In the test report at Notebookcheck, the many connectivity options are also highlighted positively.

On ITscope, the Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 for Business can celebrate success: it climbs from 176th to 13th place in the notebook category. The workhorse with Intel Core i7 processor and a classy look also gets comparatively good reviews, for example from GameStar Tech - however, the magazine criticises Microsoft for the high price. All in all, things are looking increasingly bleak for Microsoft's Surface series, it almost seems as if Microsoft has given up the fight against competitor Apple and its Macbooks: Heise is disappointed by the mediocrity of the new models and denies Microsoft the courage to experiment. Microsoft's press communication on the Surface innovations also left much to be desired. Hardware blogger Caschy even suspects that the Surface line will be completely scaled down, as a large part of the niche and experimental Surface items have been discarded. No less telling is the fact that the face of the Surface brand, product chief Panos Panay recently left the company.

The price of the Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 for Business dropped significantly in early September, leading to a surge in click numbers on ITscope.

Some new Lenovo notebooks are gaining momentum, such as the V-Series models Lenovo V17 G4 IRU 83A2 and Lenovo V17 G4 I3-1315U. Both variants are relatively affordable office notebooks with a 17-inch screen. The high-end Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Gen 2 21FA is making waves in the category with a whopping 960 clicks, securing the 16th position. The updated workstation now features a GPU with Ada-Lovelace architecture, more RAM, and an improved display.

PC-systems: International Trend in a Weakened Form

While Gartner, the market research institute, reported declining sales figures for the global PC market, the decline was less pronounced in the German B2B market. The ITscope analysis of the top 100 most popular PC systems compared to the previous year shows that the interest in PCs is lower in Germany compared to the previous year, although the decline is less pronounced than internationally. Gartner's analysts predict that the bottom has been reached and that the business will pick up again next year. On ITscope, the click numbers have also increased slightly in the last quarter, despite the summer lull and holidays. When comparing the percentage distribution of annual clicks on PC systems to the top 1000 products on ITscope, the ratio remains relatively constant. Only in the first quarter of 2023 was the interest in PC systems less pronounced.

The HP Pro Mini 400 G9, i5 2GHz at any rate, it continues to enjoy great popularity among ITscope users, still taking first place in the category with 5,320 clicks. With the HP Workstation Z2 G9, i7 yet another complete system in mini format from HP has made it into the top 10 on ITscope.

The best new entry in the category, coming in at #4, is the ThinkCentre M70q Gen 3 by Lenovo - however, the product does not offer any real innovation, as it merely replaces the predecessor model, which made it to 6th place in our top list. The ThinkStation P360 30FA has also climbed significantly in the ITscope top list, from 162nd to 17th place.

In 12th place is the Fujitsu ESPRIMO G6012 - probably one of the last models of the Japanese company on ITscope, because Fujitsu is discontinuing its client business in Europe. Fujitsu's existing support contracts will still be fulfilled until 2024. The ultra-compact mini PC with Core i5 processor has 8GB of DDR4 RAM memory and has a total storage capacity of 256GB on the SSD. Windows 11 Pro is already pre-installed.

It is to be expected that other manufacturers will enjoy increased interest after Fujitsu's exit, for example competitor Dell, which makes a new entry into the category at number 13 with the new Dell OptiPlex 7010. The compact PC is particularly suitable for businesses and can also be mounted on the back of a monitor.

Mobile phones: There's no escaping Apple's dominance 

Apple's iPhones remain the most popular smartphones in German business: as in previous quarters, the Californian company's products dominate the top 10. The iPhone SE (3rd Generation) has more than twice as many views as the top-ranked Samsung handset, with 3,581 clicks.

The new Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max is the most popular smartphone in German business.

The new Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max, which was unveiled at Apple's keynote on 12 September, is only at number 36 on our top list, however. Although the new model is attracting a lot of interest, it has not been able to catch up with the longer-listed iPhones in the last two weeks of September. In addition, the various iPhone 15 models are currently still poorly available and are only just starting to arrive at numerous distributors.

Meanwhile, the smartphone business does not look so rosy for Samsung: While Apple's prices remain largely stable, Samsung's are already falling shortly after market launch. The comparison portal Idealo predicted this trend for the Galaxy S23 as early as January. A look at the ITscope history confirms it: Instead of the original price of €1,489, the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra is now available for a WSP of €865. Overall, the South Korean company is currently struggling with profit slumps due to oversupply in the chip industry.

The price of Samsung's flagship Galaxy S23 Ultra has fallen noticeably since January.

Tablets: iPad versus Microsoft Surface 

In the tablet category, too, the first-placed Apple product has a huge gap on the competition: With 14,552 clicks (in comparison: second place has just 2,633 clicks), the Apple iPad Wi-Fi, 10.2" clearly remains at the top - and has been for over a year now.

Places 2 and 3 go to the Microsoft Surface Pro 9 for Business, 13", i7 and the variant with i5 chip. "The fact that Surface tablets are so popular in the B2B environment is mainly due to the fact that they can be seamlessly integrated into existing Microsoft environments," says ITscope managing director Benjamin Mund. "In the private customer sector, Apple's iPads have long since prevailed over the Android competition as well." What will happen to the Surface range is currently unclear anyway - you can read more about this in the chapter "Notebooks: What will become of the Microsoft Surface range?".

Printers: HP takes the lead with an inkjet printer at the top

This hasn't happened in quite a while: HP knocks the previous number one printer off the top spot with the Officejet Pro 9010e All-in-One. This inkjet multifunction printer is by far the most popular choice on ITscope and has been listed since 2021. It once again proves that longer innovation cycles do not diminish the printer's relevance for business. While HP is currently facing criticism in the consumer sector for its restrictive approach towards third-party ink cartridges, the business sector typically uses original supplies or subscription models for toner and cartridges.

The previous number 1, the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M283fdwonly made it to 4th place in the ITscope top list in the third quarter with 1,273 clicks. According to the testers of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung this model is the best laser multifunction printer ever. Also tested by the FAZ was the Brother MFC-L2710DN, the third most popular printer on ITscope. In the FAZ evaluation, however, it only came in 14th

 The second most popular inkjet printer on ITscope is a comparatively new model, namely the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-C5890DWF, in our category in 11th place with 739 clicks. In the current test of inkjet printers at Stiftung Warentest, the multifunction device from 2022 received a grade of 2.2.

Processors: Delivering High Performance at a Premium Price

In the CPU category, AMD and Intel go head-to-head every quarter. This time Intel is ahead again: the Intel Core i7 i7-13700K, 16-core is the most popular processor on ITscope. The CPU comes close to the Core i9 13900K, but does without eight efficiency cores and is thus significantly cheaper. The GameStar-Tech editorial teamis only moderately impressed by the price-performance ratio of the top CPU, however. "If you mainly play with your PC, you don't need a processor for over 400 euros like the Core i7 13700K, the magazine instead recommends cheaper alternatives from AMD, for example the Ryzen 5 5600X.

Meanwhile, the third quarter of 2023 was tumultuous for AMD, with processor sales down by over 50 percent according to CRN. On ITscope, however, AMD processors are still going strong. Right up there, the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which makes it to second place in the category with 976 clicks. The popular CPU does very well in the benchmark course from GameStar Tech. However, the testers listed as a shortcoming that the AM4 platform, to which the processor is tailored, hardly offers any upgrade options anymore. Another top ranking was achieved by the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, which PC Games Hardware praised as "gaming king". The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D also has upside. AMD's high-end model was poorly available at launch, but is now in stock at numerous distributors.

The most expensive processor in the ITscope Top Ten is the Intel Core i9 i9-13900K (WSP 502 €). So it's no great surprise that various cases of fraud have become public for this model of all things. Golem, for example, reported fake processors on Amazon, PC Games Hardware even reported a CPU that was delivered without a chip at all.

Graphics cards: MSI GeForce models dominate the market

In the third quarter of 2023, MSI's Geforce graphics cards garnered the most interest on ITscope, taking the top three spots on the winners' podium: first place in the category went to the cheapest model, the 2021, followed by the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti VENTUS 3X. The GPU with Nvidia's Ada Lovelace architecture is slightly slimmer than the previous series and thus also suitable for smaller cases.

Also in third place is a new GPU, namely the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti VENTUS 2X, which PC-Games calls "The new 440 euro graphics card". Currently, the GPU is priced at a WSP of €356 in ITscope. Test reports are not convinced by the price-performance ratio of the GPU with only 8 GB memory. PC-Welt is rather disillusioned by the performance, which is only enough for full HD gaming and PC Games Hardware recommends: "Wait for the 16-GiByte variant!".

Actually, Context reports that Nvidia has recently failed to live up to expectations for graphics cards in the gaming section - at least if the hardware and software survey conducted by gaming platform Steam in August 2023 is anything to go by.

Press contact

Sylvia Schreiber
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Tel.: +49 721 62 73 76 – 29
sylvia.schreiber@itscope.com
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About the ITscope Market barometer

ITscope is one of the leading platforms for IT procurement and sales in the B2B sector. It provides valuable support to system houses, resellers, distributors, and manufacturers in their digitalization efforts. One of the highlights of ITscope is its quarterly publication, the ITscope Market Barometer, which offers intriguing insights into the ever-evolving ICT industry. This includes identifying the most sought-after products among B2B customers and monitoring the fluctuating purchase prices of smartphones, notebooks, and processors. With its comprehensive market analysis, ITscope offers exclusive and valuable insights into the sales trends and market dynamics of the channel.