IT Distribution Revenues Continued to Decline in Q1

IT distributor revenue experienced a year-on-year decline of 5.5% to $17.85 billion in the first quarter of 2024, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) North America Distribution Tracker.

“The market continues to face a variety of headwinds including cautious buyers, attention shifting to AI and security, and difficult comparisons to prior years,” said Ruth Flynn, research vice president, IDC Tracker & Data Products. “Nevertheless, passing challenges for PCs and Network Infrastructure as well as prospects for a stronger economy set the stage for growth later in the year and into 2025.”

Software and Services remained the largest categories, growing 4.6% and 1.2% year-over-year respectively with software recovering from a 2% year-over-year decline in Q4 2023. Application spending remained down while infrastructure software drove growth. Spending on support services remained weak continuing the trend seen in 2023.

According to IDC, the Network Infrastructure category continued its transition back to normal levels after satisfying a 2023 backlog in demand. Revenue was down 18% year on year to $1.85 billion in the first quarter, following growth averaging over 24% year on year between Q4 2022 and Q3 2023 with a peak in growth of over 42% in Q2 2023.

Personal Computing leveled out at $3.2 billion with a year-on-year decline of 2.5%. Traditional PCs (desktops, notebooks, and workstations) led the category with slightly positive year-on-year growth while other products, including Tablets, Point of Sale Systems, and Thin Clients, continued to decline. The PC market is expecting a refresh cycle to begin later this year as users anticipate the end of support for Windows 10 in October 2025. Anticipated updates to Apple’s iPad line are also expected to boost the Tablet market going forward.

IDC’s data is built through an exclusive partnership with the Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC) which provides a comprehensive view of technology distribution data and market trends in the U.S. and Canada based on actual sales data collected weekly from sales receipts across the largest distributors in North America for more than 1,700 brands.

Channel Impact^®
The market continued to rebalance following pandemic disruptions as enterprise hardware spending was pulled down by a decline in Network Infrastructure and consumer devices revenues were down 9% despite growth in Traditional PCs.