Having made my predictions for the year, I wanted to follow up with the long-term vendor share developments in the ITC industry. In the Figure above I show market shares for the top 12 suppliers in the years to then of September in 2009 and 2019. There have been a lot of changes of course such as the rise of Apple and Samsung and the decline of HP (now split between Inc. and Enterprise) and IBM. Over the years Apple and Microsoft have replaced France Telecom and Nokia in the list.
The market itself grew by 22% from $5.5 to $7.8 trillion, with the leading 12 vendors accounting for a larger proportion – a sign of increasing globalization perhaps.
Looking at the developing revenues of the current top 12 (see my Figure above) shows just how dramatic Apple’s rise has been. Samsung has followed in its coat tails to become the second largest supplier. ‘Smart’ devices and cloud computing drove the biggest growth in vendor success – but these are already declining in importance and will not be the key drivers in the coming decade.
The data also shows the greater consistency of revenues of telecom suppliers in comparison with others. Traditional enterprise suppliers (IBM, HP, Dell) have gone through the biggest structural changes – jettisoning unprofitable businesses and acquiring others; HP split itself in two, Dell went private before acquiring EMC, while IBM changed itself into a cloud (from a hardware) company.
HP’s decline and the rise of Apple and Samsung were even steeper if we look at the hardware market (see my Figure above). Chinese vendors Lenovo, Huawei and (smart phone manufacturer) BBK have grown from nowhere; Nokia ditched mobile devices, while Cisco ploughed on with very consistent revenues from IP networks. In 2020 we still think of computers as different from ‘white label’ products; this is unlikely to be the case in 2030, when I expect almost every manufactured product to be intelligent and connected to the Internet.
Other changes of the decade were a fantastic 108% increase in net profit (from $247 to $541 billion) annually for the total ITC market; although here the leading 12 suppliers grew less fast than the smaller vendors – 82% v 119% respectively.
It will be fascinating to look back at the 2020 market in 10 years time; we’ll see other dramatic – sometimes unpredictable – changes. Apple’s success should encourage others with big ambitions, while many established players will continue to adapt their business models. I wish you luck!