HP has made the first change to its Personal Systems Group (PSG) distribution in several years and appointed Synnex to sell its full range of consumer and commercial desktops.
The deal expands Synnex’s portfolio from the vendor’s high-end multifunction printers and notebooks, which it was awarded access to in 2005.
“In the last six months, we have been discussing with HP and have identifi ed a lot of areas where we can both work very closely, and especially on the desktop commercial and consumer side,” Synnex CEO, Kee Ong, told ARN. “It is complementary to our existing vendors, of course. That means Synnex at this moment will have Asus, Acer, Lenovo and HP PCs. We will be able to offer a decent solution to the reseller community.”
In a statement, HP Solution Partner Organisation director, Paul Robson, said the extended agreement would allow the vendor greater access to the whitebox PC builder market.
Ong said the distributor would also look to leverage the HP brand in the consumer space.
“They have a solid plan in place and we have been talking about it for the last three months – we are not here to cannibalise and take share from other HP distributors,” he said. “But we are trying to work out a solution and do it on an incremental basis in view of the tough market situation.”
The HP desktop range is also distributed by Dicker Data and Ingram Micro.
Dicker Data sales manager, Chris Price, was not fazed by the new deal and claimed Synnex and Dicker Data played in different markets.
Ingram Micro director of product management and marketing, Matt Sanderson, also played down the impact of the deal.
“They have been in the market for some time with the notebook range and we don’t foresee this as having much impact on our business,” he said. To enable the new deal, Synnex partners will be given training in the consumer and commercial desktop range.
“We will be providing education to the resellers that haven’t sold the HP range before,” Ong said. “We need to get them up to speed to understand the HP solution and how to offer them to customers.”
The PSG distribution change comes on the back of claims that the economic downturn is hitting PC hardware sales. According to IDC’s global fi gures for Q4, PC shipments fell 0.4 per cent year-on-year, while PC microprocessor shipments fell by 17 per cent sequentially and 11.4 per cent year-on-year. The analyst group predicted sales would continue to slide in 2009.
