205 million downloads of product sheets per quarter can tell you a lot about the market. And Q1 2011 tells a few stories that ICEcat, publisher of product content for 14,140+ channel partner websites, can share with us.
Today, ICEcat offers more than 1 million product data-sheets of more than 4000 brands, in 35 languages and their data-sheets are used by on-line shops, channel partner ERP systems, comparison sites, purchase systems and other applications.
More brands launch into on-line as a 64% surge from Q1 2010 to Q1 2011 shows ICEcat now offers 4028 brands. That's either healthy competition chasing the business or a lemming-like push towards the cliff. But with that amount of brands, the early adopters into on-line sales no longer have the pioneer advantage.
On top of more brands, there were more product categories...can you believe we represent more than 1030 product categories? Is that volume just more confusing for customers or are we really over-excelling in reaching niche product areas? Of course, you have to factor in the consumer electronics products that by jumping from analog to digital join in the consumer IT channel.
ICEcat added 28% more channel partners this Q1, demonstrating that more of us are increasing our on-line activity.
All this new activity helped spur datasheet downloads (DDs) to 205 million in Q1, up 21% from last year's Q1.
Brand News
The fastest growing brands in the top 100: Ricoh (+380%), Advanced Cable Technology (+308%) and Verbatim (+185%). ICEcat explains Ricoh has an increased focus on the online channel. ACT benefits from the growing importance of cable accessories in the online market as a cross-sell. And Verbatim is a classic storage supplies brand, effectively using the online channel..
The "shakers" in Q1-2011 top 100 are: Nokia (-38%), Projecta (-36%), Nikon (-34%), Microsoft (-29%) and Intel (-29%).
Product Categories
One of the most interesting points from this report is that DDs the on-line interest in notebooks is still expanding (+27%) and netbooks (+58%) perform even better than tablets (+48%). Only PCs stagnate (+8%) performing below average. This is a totally different picture than the one portrayed by market researchers...who have concluded that tablets have impacted notebooks sales and dented netbooks.
Notebooks, PCs and warranties still form the categories top three in Q1-2011.The most significant changes in relative category popularity in Q1 2011, compared to the same period one year earlier, are the continued rise of cable locks (+586%) to secure mobile computer products, and the sharp decline of PDAs (-24%) and projection screens (-25%). Smart phones and smart boards are killing the latter two categories, concludes ICEcat.
Most notable are typical consumer electronics/appliance categories that are rising, like LED TVs (+569%), refrigerators (+119%) and LCD TVs (+103%). Here we show you a chart with the Top 30 from the Top 100 downloads...
It's hard to argue (when you consider the dimension: 205 million per quarter from 14,140 parters) that these statistics don't tell us a lot about what's on the mind (and in the wallets) of the channel.
In the future we'd like to see more info cross-referenced against the type of reseller and the geographic split, but for now: kudos for instituting a report that we look forward to each time it's published.
Go ICEcat