Beancounters at Context claim that the European channel did rather well in 2020 despite the pandemic,
The outfit reported that distribution sales hit €26.3 billion with year-on-year (YoY) growth of 10.2 percent for the fourth quarter. Full year sales were €83.3 billion, and growth stood at 7.2 percent on last year.
This year is expected to do just as well thanks to digital transformation along with increased demand for home working and homeschooling technology.
Small and medium-sized resellers continued to dominate the channel, with a market share little changed from 2019 at 36.5 percent. Corporate resellers lost two per cent of their share over the period, accounting for 26.4 percent of the market in 2020, while retail chain players saw their share increase by almost one percentage point to 23.3 percent.
Context global managing director Adam Simon said: “The IT channel in Europe has ended 2020 by once again outperforming expectations – we have not seen double-digit growth in a quarter in recent years. With the current level of demand for digital products, there’s more to come in 2021. We expect growth to restart in the early part of January.”
