New report lays out IT vendor competitive landscape in EMEA Retail

New report lays out IT vendor competitive landscape in EMEA Retail

IDC Retail Insights recently released a new report, which provides a competitive analysis of IT vendors in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region of the retail industry.

The study includes a competitive mapping of the major retail IT vendors and revenue estimates for the EMEA retail sector. Vendors included in the study are the top 10 players for each of the three technology categories – hardware, software and services.

"While our vendor revenue estimates and demand-side data confirm the predominance of IBM overall, Oracle/SAP in retail software, Accenture in retail IT services, and Wincor Nixdorf/NCR/Fujitsu in store systems, the competitive positioning of the top vendors in EMEA retail is rapidly evolving and diversifying," said Ivano Ortis, IDC Retail Insights research director. "Retailers should carefully consider how these changes will impact their IT strategy and IT selection decisions."

Significant combined market share

The analyst’s vendor revenue estimates for 2009 are designed to provide an overview of the retail IT players and their penetration in the EMEA retail sector. The top 26 IT vendors covered in the study accounted for around half of total EMEA retail IT spending in 2009.

The vendors have been ranked according to market share estimates, using IDC's European Vertical Markets 2009 survey and Worldwide Retail IT Spending Guide 2009-2 data, as well as retail alignment, estimated by IDC Retail Insights via a set of indicators.

Key findings from the IDC Retail Insights study include IBM having the largest share of the market compared with other vendors covered, while Accenture continues to lead the IT services pure plays.

Differences in positioning

While Oracle and SAP continue to run head to head in the retail software market, a number of differences emerge in the retail software vendor positioning, which also includes Aldata, Epicor/CRS, JDA, Retalix, SAS, and Teradata, as well as solution roadmaps and retail industry strategy.

Store-system-centric vendors (Fujitsu, NCR, Wincor Nixdorf) have their own distinct approaches to self-service, mobile and non-store solution strategies, and are adding more capabilities around software and solution-centric services. And HP and Microsoft were marked out from the crowd of horizontal vendors.