The Greek digital technologies market
The digital technology market in Greece will decline marginally this year. This estimate derives from a study from the European Information Technology Observatory published by the Hellenic Innovation Agency. In Greece, the market for information and communication technology fell by just 0.1% to €5.515 billion in 2018. It will, as expected, contract again marginally this year by 0.4%.
The picture of the sectors are different, with IT showing a 2.5% growth in 2018 and growth of 0.9% this year. In absolute terms, the value of the domestic IT industry in 2018 was EUR 1.778 billion with a forecast for 2019 to be EUR 1.761 billion.
In contrast, the Greek telecoms market finished 2018 with a negative sign (-1.3%), reaching a value of EUR 3.737 billion last year and instead will have a negative sign (-0.1%) this year with EUR 3.732 billion market value.
The ICT market in Greece has shown stagnation for the past few years, with exceptions in 2014 and 2017 when it showed positive signs. As we can see in 2019, the performance is an improvement on previous times when we saw a decline of 2.8%.
The global trend of the IT and software markets usually goes up. With this increase, it comes as no surprise that Greece will catch up to the norm around this time.
The IT equipment sector will follow the opposite path, seen in 2018. It will continue into negative territory in 2019.
It seems that the IT equipment market has slowed down in the past year, with a slight decline of 1.1% 2018, but there’s been a significant drop of 11.9% for 2019. The value of the category last year was EUR 492 million and for this year we predict it will be EUR 434 million.
Though both IT equipment and personal computer sales have slowed in recent years, the performance of IT equipment is largely related to the sluggish performance of PC sales. Last year, the personal computer market grew by 0.6%. For 2019, analysts expect a decline of 17.9%. The digial market stood at 233 million euros in 2018, but will decrease to 192 million euros this year.
While the tablet market in Greece saw a 2.1% increase in 2018, the signs for 2019 look worse—it’s going down again by 8.7%.
Lower was the number of computers sales in the Greek market in 2018, lower by 1% when compared to a year earlier. This year, however, the sign will be strongly negative by 23%. There were 412,000 computers sold in Greece last year. That number will probably go down to 317,000 this year.
In the server category, 2018 was a great year with 21.6% growth and a market value of €56 million. However, 2019 is expecting to be 8.4% lower, with the category’s market value at EUR 52 million.
In storage system sales, the sign was positive by 2.6% in 2018 and is set to grow 5.4% in 2019 with a total market value of 26 million euros and 27 million euros respectively.
In the Multifunction Printers (MFP) market in Greece, the slowdown has been ongoing in 2019, with sales declining by 16.7%, while an estimated decline of 6.6% is predicted for this year.
Greek companies have been undergoing a digital transformation lately, which is why IT services are gaining popularity. The Greek IT services industry grew by 3.6% in 2018, and will be expected to grow by another 3.3% in 2019. This means that the digital market is over €1 billion in 2018 and will be a little over €1 billion this year.
There is a lot of positivity in the individual categories within this sector (i.e. Projects, Outsourcing, Support and Deployment and Business Consulting), which all increased in 2018. They will continue to grow in the coming year
Software also saw a positive upward trend in 2018. It expanded by 5.2% and predicted to grow by 3.1% more in 2019 as well. It held a total market value of 282 million euros in 2018 and 293 million euros this year.
The most dynamic category of the domestic software market in 2018 and will remain so in 2019 is Applications. It marked a 7.5% increase in demand last year and 5.3% this year. The Applications Development and Delivery category was a driving force behind the 3.1% growth in 2018. It will continue to expand 1.7% in 2019. The System Infrastructure Software (SIS) category has also been growing steadily at 3.4%, and will gain 0.8% this fiscal year.
In 2019, the Greek telecoms market should follow the trends from 2018. This year is also expected to contract a bit more, as it did in 2018. Over the past year, the telecommunications industry has been steadily declining by about 0.1%. We expect this trend to continue in 2019 and the projected market value for this year is 3.732 billion EUR.
The telecom equipment market slumped by 5.2% in 2018 and was worth around €540 million. Plans in the telecom sector are looking up, with sales up 0.8% and to reach around $545 million this year.
On the contrary, the market for mobile devices in Greece has been declining since 2017, decreasing gradually. This trend will continue in 2019 as well. The value of the mobile phone market was 315 million euros in 2018. By 2019, according to estimates, will be at 316 million euros.Smartphone sales took a significant hit in 2018. Market value fell by 46.1% to 110 million euros. 2019 will be negative but at a lower level of decline, with the market worth €87 milion.
On the other hand, there’s been a lot of growth in sales of large-screen smartphones. Sales in 2018 reached €188 million with a 50.6% increase. In 2019, the growth rate will be 14.6% with a digital market value of €215 million.
While the mobile phone market in Greece decreased by 5.3% in 2018, it will decrease by 11.6% in 2019. Last year, 1.858 million devices were sold in the Greek market, with 788,000 of them being smartphones and 491,000 of these being phablets. In 2019, the market will decline further in terms of sales volume. It will sell 1.644 million devices this year. Out of these, 706,000 will be smartphones and 527,000 will be phablets.
The digital market for telephony services has been decreasing this year and the prediction for next year is for an even deeper decline. In the last year, the market value for this industry has dropped by 0.6% to €3.197 billion for 2018. The sector will reach a market value of €3.187 billion by end 2019, which equals a drop of 0.3%.
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Author: PC-GR
The World of Technology
