IDC: IT Distribution Revenues Remain Stable

Distributor revenues inched upwards to $20.2 B in the third quarter of 2024, according to IDC’s North America Distribution Tracker. Year-over-year growth was down a fraction of a percent with continued growth in Software, Personal Computing, and Security, but offset by declines in Network Infrastructure, Services, and AV.

“IT distributors remain a critical component of a successful strategy,” said Ruth Flynn, research vice president, IDC Tracker & Data Products. “The flexibility and product coverage of IT distributors helped balance factors like interest rates and political uncertainty with post-pandemic recovery in a challenging Q3. An example is PC growth of 2% through distribution where overall PC shipments were down 6% in preliminary Q3 reporting.”

Personal Computing sales for 3Q24 came in at $3.6B, which at 2% year-over-year is a second consecutive quarter of growth. The notebook market is showing a return to normalcy at 4.6% year-over-year post the covid volatility. The product mix continues to shift towards AI PC configurations with 24% of notebook revenue now derived from AI PCs, which is up 142% year-over-year.

Software saw 11.8% year-over-year growth settling at $4.4 B. All of the largest software categories grew, but most notably, Embedded Software grew 22.8% year-over-year driven by Cisco as the large amount of their network infrastructure hardware sold in 2023 gets deployed in 2024 and the associated embedded software is upgraded.

Additionally, the cybersecurity market grew nicely in 3Q24 with 7.4% year-over-year growth in security software, and 2.6% year-over-year growth in the security appliance market, driven by Palo Alto Networks which solidly holds the number one spot with almost 42% share of sales.

IDC’s North America Weekly Distribution Tracker and North America Monthly Distribution Tracker are built on the exclusive partnership between IDC and the Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC).

Channel Impact^®
The report brings modestly encouraging news for all segments of the channel.