Wyse drives thin clients to fat year

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 20 September 2005 18:47

IT Industry - Market

Last year was a record year for the Australian thin client device market, with one dominant player, Wyse, driving the industry almost single handedly, according to a new report.

Research group IDC has recently completed an annual report titled "Australia Thin Client Forecast, 2005 – 2009." The report from IDC shows record results for the Australian thin client device market of 59,000 units for 2004.

IDC has seen a growth in thin client case studies and also an acceptance from Australian CIOs, according to the group. Over the last few years there has been a lack of understanding about thin clients amongst IT managers, says IDC, however this is now being overcome as organisations are becoming more mature and intelligent with their IT budgets and find it difficult to overlook the inherent ROI that a thin client device environment offers.

"The thin client market has continued to post growth rates that most hardware vendors would salivate at the mere mention of. Despite this market growth only one vendor effectively saw growth during 2004," said Michael Sager, IDC senior analyst for PC hardware.

The local market is totally dominated to almost monopolistic proportions by Wyse as it gained over 15 points in market share from 2003 and almost single handedly drove growth in the thin client device market. Wyse now has more than 80% market share in the thin clients space. Hewlett Packard was able to maintain its place in second position despite decreasing by almost 7% in terms of market share. Rounding out the top three was Sun Microsystems who finished with 4% share of the local market.

The forecast for the thin client device market also looks very bright. IDC's forecast through 2009 has the market shipping over 126,000 devices with a CAGR of 13% from 2004. Comparing these figures to the PC market forecast shows that there is expected to be almost one thin client device for every ten commercial desktops sold in 2009.

"What is truly amazing about the growth in the market during 2004 was that it was effectively spearheaded by a lone vendor. The economic, geographic, and organisation dynamics of Australia make it a prime market for thin client devices. In light of this, perhaps it's time for IT suppliers to start paying attention," stated Sager.

Top 5 Vendor Market Share:

Wyse 80.5%
HP 8.1%
Sun 4.4%
VXL Instruments 2.7%
Maxspeed 1.1%
(Others 3.2%)