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Sales of business-targeted monitors have been given a boost by strong adoption of monitors with DisplayPort inputs.
Sales within Western Europe are expected to grow by 6 per cent, year-on-year, during Q1, according to CONTEXT. Overall sales of monitors have continued to increase during the first two months of the year in both the consumer and business segments. With 8 per cent revenue growth year-on-year, business monitors still represent over 50 per cent of distributors’ cash flow. Consumer monitors, however, experienced the greater revenue growth, with a 12 per cent year-on-year increase in early Q1.
However, the biggest increase has been in sales of business monitors with DisplayPort inputs, which have grown by over 27 per cent year-on-year. Although HP has maintained its lead in the business sector of the market, its sales of models with DisplayPort inputs actually declined. In this niche, Dell, Lenovo and Philips had much higher sales increase in early Q1 2018, growing collectively over 38 per cent year-on-year.
Another one of the drivers has been an increased demand for monitors with USB type C ports: sales of these grew by over 19 per cent year-on-year in the first two months of 2018, although volumes are still very low, accounting for only 2 per cent of unit sales and 5 per cent of revenues. Even though HDMI was designed for consumer-electronics applications, sales of business-oriented monitors with this input have also grown by 19 per cent compared to the same period last year.
“As the first quarter of this year progresses, it is expected that the performance of business monitors will remain relatively strong”, said Dominika Koncewicz, Senior Analyst at CONTEXT. “In addition, there will be even more sales of DisplayPort models thanks to their ability to connect almost any other type of monitor and support the multiple displays that are becoming increasingly popular in the corporate space. Moreover, as more devices of all kinds adopt the USB type C, growth in sales of monitors with this input is likely to accelerate in both the business and consumer markets.”
