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The UK IT market experienced a 4.7 per cent overall growth in 2007, according to the GfK IT Barometer Report, which tracks and records the performance of hardware and software sales in the UK.
The most successful period of the year was Q4, which grew nine per cent in value compared to the same period in 2006.
Much of the growth is accredited to the increasing consumer demand for mobile computers – with the laptop sales shooting up 23 per cent during 2007, while the value of the desktop market fell eight per cent.
Other success stories of 2007 include gaming devices (up 68 per cent), PC mini-speakers (up 23 per cent), storage devices (up 23 per cent), and mice (up 15 per cent).
Sectors in decline during the year included PDAs (down 31 per cent), multi disk drives (down 21 per cent), boxed software (down 11 per cent), smart phones (down 9 per cent), and desktop PCs (down 8 per cent).
“We were expecting to see another strong year for the IT market in 2007, and it hasn’t disappointed,” said Anthony Norman, business group director at GfK comments. “We expect to see more moderate growth rate in the first half of 2008. Current market conditions will have an impact on spending on IT hardware and software, but we do not expect this to register any negative results.”
