Tag: thin clients

Thin clients are thin on the ground

Posted on March 31, 2016 by - News, Products

skeleton-woman-615While thin client set ups have been touted as the “next big thing” for nearly two decades, it would appear that no-one can make cash from them.

Bean counters at IDC said that the market leaders HP and Dell suffered double-digit shipment drops last year. Apparently companies are walking away from, or cancelling their thin-client projects. Ironically mostly before the poor economic climate, thin clients were touted as a cost-saving measure.

Thin client projects are being canned or postponed in the face of the faltering economic climate and reduced public budgets, IDC said as it warned that shipments in the sector shrank last year.

According to IDC, thin and terminal-client shipments fell 6.9 per cent to 5.08 million in 2015, with market leaders Dell and HP enduring double-digit drops.

To be fair it is not all doom. Thin-clients did better than PCs which fell 10.6 per cent last year.  IDC insists that the outlook for thin clients and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) remains favourable, although people have been saying that since networking became a thing.

Jay Chou, research manager, worldwide enterprise client device trackers at IDC said that while there was a certain amount of slowdown expected as many organisations had just refreshed their systems a year or two ago, the extent of economic and currency-related issues had a definite impact in the budget and timeline of other projects which were supposed to be in the pipeline.

“Nonetheless, awareness around VDI continues to improve, and IDC does expect an improved outlook ahead, especially as companies begin to think about moving beyond Windows 7.”

While the PC market may be consolidating into the hands of fewer players, the same cannot be said of thin clients, where market leaders Dell and HP lost market share hand over fist during the year.

The US duo’s collective share of thin-client shipments fell from 55.1 to 50.6 per cent between 2014 and 2015, with Dell seeing shipments drop 13.8 per cent and HP suffering a 15 per cent fall, IDC said.

NComputing came third as its shipments rose 12.8 per cent to 518,000, IDC said.

Dell hits the high spot

Posted on March 23, 2015 by - News

Dell logoEven though terminal clients are in an inexorable decline, thin clients performed quite well in 2014, with growth up 4.6 percent compared to the year before.

And there may be brighter news ahead for thin clients, according to a report from market research company IDC – enterprises are expected to resume projects in 2015 that were delayed by the worldwide slump.

The biggest beneficiary of client devices was Dell, which in the fourth quarter of last year had a 27.2 percent share.

HP took second place, with 25.5 percent of the market, followed by Centerm (10.8%), Igel (5.2%) and NComputing (5.1%).

The total number of units shipped in the quarter amounted to 1,418,402 units, a decline of 12.5 percent from the same period in 2013 – and the decline was due to terminal clients being rather old hat.

Dell did well because it won some key sales in the financial sector, IDC said.

NComputing saw its position in the pecking order drop to the number five positionm for the quarter.

Thin clients survive PC battle

Posted on December 18, 2014 by - News

A not so mobile X86 PCThere’s been a battle in the enterprise between thin clients and commercial PC for market share and it looks like the thin clients have won.

According to IDC, thin clients competed directly with commercial PCs for market share and in 2014 the former did better than the latter.

Thin clients in the EMEA market are still a small market but growth exceeded market average and they will continue to grow  in 2015.

Oleg Sidorkin, a senior research analyst at IDC said: “Rapid deployment of thin client technology generates a leveraging effect, accelerating further adoption.”  The top four countries for shipments are Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and France – together they will represent 65.1 percent of the entire EMEA market by the end of the year.

These large markets will continue to grow.  “Once vendors gain a foothold in these markets, they can grow quickly as these markets continue to increase their EMEA share,” he said.

Thin clients get skinnier

Posted on December 9, 2014 by - News

Dell logoThe move towards thin clients has slackened after some growth prompted by Microsoft’s decision to deck Windows XP support.

IDC said shipments of terminal clients and thin clients amounted to 1.35 million units in the third quarter of this year, falling by 1.8 percent and bucking predictions.

While Windows XP made some move from PCs to thin clients, public projects were delayed and that accounts for the slippage.

Thin clients represent a massive 97 percent of enterprise client devices.  Within the thin client umbrella, those without operating systems – so called zero clients – still hold 24.6 percent share.

The winners in the thin client race for the third quarter are HP, Dell, Ncomputing, Centerm and Igel.  Of these, Dell saw growth of 16.6 percent compared to the same quarter last year, while Ncomputing’s share slumped by 44.7 percent.  HP more or less held its own although its share fell 4.3 percent compared to the same quarter last year.

Thin clients have their day

Posted on September 19, 2014 by - News

Dell logoAs many as 97 percent of enterprise client device are now thin clients and share continues to grow.

That’s according to market research firm IDC, reporting on sales in the second calendar quarter of this year.

Growth in these type of devices is epected to be 5.8 million units, that’s growth, year on year, of 6.2 percent.

And there’s a trend for enterprises to buy thin clients without operating systems – so called zero clients.  Those types of devices held a 27.9 percent share in Q2 2014, and up 22.8 percent from the first quarter this year.

Windows Embedded OS thin clients hold the lead with 41.6 percent share.

As far as vendors go, Dell (DellWyse) is top of the pile, with a 28.8 percent share. HP has fallen to number two, with 26.5 percent share.  Ncomputing is third at 11.6 percent share, followed by Centerm which has a large share in Chinese markets, and Igel which is strong in western Europe.