China's Low End Server Market - Demand Analysis and Outlook for 2004 - 2006 and Understanding the PRC Buyer's Decision Making

SUMMARY

China leads the growth in installations of x86 servers in the Asia Pacific region with strong domestic demand fueled by SMEs, private corporations and state-owned enterprises. Our research addresses a number of key "China unique" issues that are vital to the success of your marketing, advertising, pricing and service strategies.

Report highlights include

• Purchases of locally made and in-house built x86 servers will be a very significant portion of the market.
• The demand for x86 servers in China will become still more robust in 2004 and we expect the country to be entering a new phase of IT growth in 2005 - 2006 as Chinese companies continue to expand their operations in Asia and the west for sales growth.
• Sales of servers priced at less than $25,000 will increase over 22% each year for the next 3 years.
• Challenges to vendors will be addressing the fact servers are increasingly seen as commodity products in China and price will continue to be the swing vote for purchasing decisions.
• Main drivers of growth will be file and print servers, email, business intelligence, and application development machines.
• Vendor challenges will building a sales model based on thin profits and large sales volume.
• When considering which server to purchase, China's IT managers rely far more on peer referrals and recommendations than trade show or advertising in business journals.
• China's IT manager's perception of the importance of an Intel vs AMD chips has narrowed significantly in the last year.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Figure 1 China's Low End Server Market - Unit Installations (US$M) 2004 - 2006
• Figure 2 China's Low End Server Market - Revenue Growth (US$M) 2004 - 2006
• Figure 3 Growth Drivers
• Figure 4 Planned Uses of New Servers by Industry Sector 2004 - 2006
• Figure 5 Information Sources Used for Server Purchase Decisions - SME Market
• Figure 6 Information Sources Used for Server Purchase Decisions - State Owned Enterprises
• Figure 7 Information Sources Used for Server Purchase Decisions - Private Corporations
• Figure 8 Application Analysis - How End User Departments in China are using Servers.
• Figure 9 Importance of Warranty, Maintenance Agreements in Purchase Decisions
• Figure 10 Importance of Service Level Agreements for Service & Repair Calls
• Figure 11 User's Perception of the Importance on Intel or AMD
• Figure 12 Percentage of Respondents Planning for SAN