Top five distribution-hardware problems

“No one on the Romanian market can sustain financial losses of 10 percent, generated by variations in the exchange rate,” according to a declaration for Business Standard by Adorian Demeter, Purchasing Manager for RHS Company, one of the largest IT&C product distributors on the market.

Furthermore, in the near future, the acquisition of hardware products could be postponed, according to producers of such equipment. They believe that the end users will be more sensitive to price and more careful in terms of brand, and quality of services and products they pay for.

“Many companies will not be able to cover the rise in lending costs, and we will witness many bankruptcies and revisions of principal activity objectives among second-tier companies, but not only,” added Demeter.

The dramatic drop in interest for desktops is giving distributors major headaches. “The desktop market used to sustain component distribution. Average margins in terms of notebooks make up about half of the distributor component margin,” explained Demeter.

According to Fujitsu Siemens Computers officials, the drop in prices on some products, which at one time were intended for high end consumers which must now be redirected to clients with lower buying power, is another challenge in terms of the current market. Bogdan Iftemie, Sales Manager of Acer Romania, said that market players are incapable of administering change and of adapting to the competition.