UK channel poised for PC price hike

[WStore_Dan]

Sorry to scare you all and be the bearer of bad news...

 

UK channel poised for PC price hike

 

A-brand PC vendors are set to raise their channel pricing within weeks in the wake of the weakening pound and a spike in component costs.

 

Fujitsu has confirmed it will increase its prices within four to eight weeks, with HP and Sony VAIO among the other big names to reveal they are considering similar moves in calendar Q2.

 

Sterling yesterday plunged to a nine-month low of 1.48 against the dollar. With most components denominated in dollars, this has led to a spike in the EMEA cost bases of the major PC manufacturers.

 

Memory prices have also risen dramatically in recent months and every vendor CRN tracked down admitted the two factors combined mean price rises are all but inevitable. Some sources believe entry-level notebooks may rise by up to £40 in Q2.

 

Darren Neath, channel director at Fujitsu, said: “The market will see price increases because of the changes in Forex and component prices. This is something we are going through right now and in the next four to eight weeks you will see price increases as stock comes into the channel.”

 

Anthony Brown, head of Network Communications at Sony UK, said: “A predicted increase in the price of memory chips, along with currency fluctuations, may necessitate a rise in the trade pricing of the VAIO range towards the end of the first quarter of our new financial year [beginning April].

 

"Should this happen, we will communicate details to our channel partners in due course.”

 

Kevin Matthews, HP channel manager for Enterprise Storage, Servers and Networking, claimed he was unable to offer any specific pricing information. But he claimed the vendor would work to offset any changes resulting from the weakening pound.

 

“In line with a lot of other vendors, currency will have an impact," he said. "There are other things we will do to try and manage and minimise any impact. We will make sure our discount strategy reflects currency (fluctuations)."

 

 

 

If any of you are planning to purchase PCs any time soon, I would suggest to do so sooner rather than later where possible

 

Regards

[m25man]

Dan,

 

I applaud you for being so restrained.

 

I have had to warn clients that they may see next year IT budgets buy them 25% less that they would at current rates.

 

I have seen HP spares increasing in price almost daily as it is, a scsi card that was £85 in December is now £153 and anything which is new stock is rising just as fast.

 

The truth is that the £ is not just low against the dollar both are lower against everything else!

 

We are obsessed by £ v $ exchange rates but the real indicator is Gold which is alway strong in a recession has gone from $500 to $1200 dollars an ounce and we don't have any reserves because Gordon sold all ours when it was at the lowest rate!

 

I think £40 on a £400 laptop is going to be the least of our worries.....

[localzuk]

This will help our serious budget issues next year... I'm gonna be running the IT in the school on thin air as it is. *shakes fist at the recession gods*

[somabc]

We are obsessed by £ v $ exchange rates but the real indicator is Gold which is alway strong in a recession has gone from $500 to $1200 dollars an ounce and we don't have any reserves because Gordon sold all ours when it was at the lowest rate!

 

To be fair he had just seen the Cash 4 Gold adverts on TV

 

According to reports, Brown hit upon the idea when drinking his morning coffee and watching GMTV. As he sat down to eat his Weetabix, it just so happened that an advertisement for the website began playing on his portable telly. Brown himself picks up the story:

 

It suddenly occurred to me that I own gold: lots of it in fact. That supply of bullion was sitting there doing nothing and hadn’t been touched in years. In fact, if anyone so much as sets foot in the Bank of England vault, loads of alarms go off like when Alan Davies gets the wrong answer in QI. The chances of anyone ever using that bullion were slim to none, so I thought to myself, “why the heck not?” — Gordon Brown

 

Brown immediately put the wheels in motion with a quick phone call to the Queen — who happened to be having a lie in at the time and by all accounts was not pleased to be disturbed — and it was agreed: the gold would be sold.

 

Within the hour, Brown had visited cash4mygold and received a quote for the £100 billion worth of gold: £23.60. Supposedly, the PM began to have second thoughts as this seemed too good an offer to be true, but it was too late as he had already hit the ’submit’ button on the ‘confirm sale’ page.

 

It is thought the money will be pumped back into the country’s economy, whose foremost priority this week is to… find more gold to replenish the bank’s supply.

 

Gordon Brown sells country’s bullion to cash for gold website - Retro Yakking

Edited March 4, 2010 by somabc

[dgsmith]

Is this likely to affect just brand-name products, or will it affect those companies that produce their own hardware such as RM and Stone?

[Heebeejeebee]

Good job I got my switches, servers and a stack of new PCs ordered early then Thanks the Dan for that by the way. Top service!

 

HBJB

[glennda]

Is this likely to affect just brand-name products, or will it affect those companies that produce their own hardware such as RM and Stone?

 

I would say it will as they still have to by the components from abroad as pretty much nothing inside them is made here. its a pain in the really just as they reduce the amount we are allowed to spend! next year we are already talking about putting off an ict room that is 5 years old back to summer 2011!

[WStore_Dan]

Is this likely to affect just brand-name products, or will it affect those companies that produce their own hardware such as RM and Stone?

 

Hi dgsmith

 

I'd imagine they will be affected in the same way I'm afraid as they still have to source the same components.

 

Not exactly what you need when planning your summer spend I guess so lets just hope the increases are kept to a minimum

[Hightower]

Is this likely to affect just brand-name products, or will it affect those companies that produce their own hardware such as RM and Stone?

 

It might affect Stone Computers, but I doubt it will affect RM as all they do is pick the end-of-line off Intel's factory floor and put that in their computers. How can RM increase their prices for crap hardware when they already charge more for it than other companies selling decent hardware?!

Edited March 20, 2010 by EduTech
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[K.C.Leblanc]

Eek, I take it it's quite likely photographic equipment will be affected in the same way. I'm hoping to get a Nikon dSLR later this year.

[glennda]

It might affect Stone Computers, but I doubt it will affect RM as all they do is pick the end-of-line off Intel's factory floor and put that in their computers. How can RM increase their prices for hardware when they already charge more for it than other companies selling decent hardware?!

 

same used to be said of viglen apparently now they use proper components but i doubt it!!

Edited March 20, 2010 by EduTech
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[dgsmith]

It might affect Stone Computers, but I doubt it will affect RM as all they do is pick the end-of-line off Intel's factory floor and put that in their computers. How can RM increase their prices for hardware when they already charge more for it than other companies selling decent hardware?!

 

Stone and RM have a very similar specification on their ranges. For instance, we have been getting quotes recently for desktops from both RM and Stone, and both have been quoting exactly the same (including the new Core i3 which just came out in January). Your comment about RM may have been true some time ago, but things have moved on - they're very much up to date now on their hardware ranges.

 

I'll guess we'll just have to hope it doesn't happen before May, as we predict quote a bit of hardware ordering soon!

Edited March 20, 2010 by EduTech
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[Hightower]

Stone and RM have a very similar specification on their ranges. For instance, we have been getting quotes recently for desktops from both RM and Stone, and both have been quoting exactly the same (including the new Core i3 which just came out in January). Your comment about RM may have been true some time ago, but things have moved on - they're very much up to date now on their hardware ranges.

 

I'll guess we'll just have to hope it doesn't happen before May, as we predict quote a bit of hardware ordering soon!

 

So how come machines we don't get from RM work flawlessly, but have endless problems with RM hardware (recent too).

 

Like last year we bought 36 RM One's, and so far around 15 of them have had to have mainboards replaced.

 

And the year before that we bought RM (D Chassis I believe) machines with TFT monitors, and out of 24 a whopping 8 monitors have had to have capacitors replaced.

 

Their hardware is garbage and I will be asking the boss NOT to buy from them ever again!

[dgsmith]

So how come machines we don't get from RM work flawlessly, but have endless problems with RM hardware (recent too).

 

Like last year we bought 36 RM One's, and so far around 15 of them have had to have mainboards replaced.

 

And the year before that we bought RM (D Chassis I believe) machines with TFT monitors, and out of 24 a whopping 8 monitors have had to have capacitors replaced.

 

Their hardware is garbage and I will be asking the boss NOT to buy from them ever again!

 

We have 90% of our computers being RM branded and had little problems. We always get quotes from elsewhere, and that 10% of the time have not gone with RM.

 

We recently got an eval unit from Stone - all electronics (mainboard, processor etc) are identical; even the cases are exactly the same except the front piece (the actual chassis is the same design). RM have Expert (Intel motherboard) and Ascend (cheap Asus motherboards) ranges which obviously differ in price, but again Stone can offer the same ranges too. I'd steer clear from the Ascend ranges as the motherboards in these are quite cheap and I have been aware of problems (we were recently offered the chance to change our order to the Expert series as they weren't able to fix the motherboards in our original Ascend series order quick enough).

 

Don't think that I am "defending" RM or being all "pro-RM" - i'm merely stating we have had little problem with their desktops and that they offer no different to most other suppliers. We don't buy their monitors so couldn't really say.

 

But hey, what RM do or don't offer has nothing to do with the original price hikes mentioned

[Hightower]

But hey, what RM do or don't offer has nothing to do with the original price hikes mentioned

 

I know - that could have been a slippery slope. Well handled

 

All I'm saying is (which is related to the initial post) how can RM see it fit to increase their prices when they already charge 10-20% more than other suppliers.

[WStore_Dan]

An update for you all and it's bad news as suspected

 

PC vendors set date for price spike

 

The majority of A-brands PC vendors will hoist their prices through distribution on 1 April or 1 May, with increases set to vary from five to 15 per cent.

[Face-Man]

Remember this is nothing new

 

The Cutting Edge

 

in 1999 an earthquake in Tawain was blamed for pushing up prices of RAM for a while.

 

What is also true is Moore's law has proved a reliable prediction of the computing power available increasing over time.

 

Therefore unless you need computers soon you tend to be better off waiting. I may be wrong on this occasion but as schools budgets are going to be cut anyway we are going to have to get creative with what we can buy.