After a difficult cycle, due to the stagnant economic situation and to downward pricing on products, in 2005 the Italian computer and peripherals sector has shown some signs of recovery, totalling an estimated value of $6.527 billion, an increase of 2.4 in Euro currency over the previous year.

Larger companies kept consolidating and rationalizing their existing infrastructure, paying more attention to Return on Investment (ROI) and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), while some medium-sized companies took advantage of decreasing prices to replace their computer hardware. Families also played a key role in the purchase of sophisticated PCs, supplied with multimedia, entertainment and communication devices.  The computer and peripherals sector is forecast to remain one of the best prospects for U.S. imports in the next three years, especially in certain market segments.

Pressure on prices continued to be strong in 2005 and often created a great divergence between shipment trends and value trends. According to ASSINFORM, the major Italian Association of Information and Communications Technology companies, in spite of an aggregate growth in value of 6.4% in the first semester of 2005, sales in units grew 14.9 % for Personal Computers and 5,7% for large servers.

In the first semester of 2005, PC units sold (both desktops and portables) were 1,879,956, with families purchasing 385.919 units (+40,9%), a much higher growth rate than enterprises (1,494,037 units, a growth rate of 9.6%).
In the past few years, portable PCs have been gaining market share over desktops and servers.  In the first semester of 2005, with over 890,300 units sold, portables grew 38.5% in volume, versus a decrease of 1.7%  for desktops (905,625 units) and an increase of 15.4% for PC servers (84,025 units).  Portable PCs now account for 49.6 of the PC market, doubled over 2003.

The midrange server segment and the workstation segment are facing growing competition from both mainframes and Wintel platforms, which are aggressively priced and offer continuous performance improvements and a wide range of applications.  The mainframe/high end server segment continues to record considerable growth, confirming the trend of larger enterprises to invest in the rationalization and better management of their information systems.

The storage segment and the printer segments have been stagnant, but some signs of recovery are being seen...(continues) 

Please note:
This Industry Sector Profile is also part of the more comprehensive
ITALY COUNTRY COMMERCIAl GUIDE 2006.