3. New Zealand IT Market
The information in this section is taken from a survey of IT businesses conducted by Statistics New Zealand. For more information about the survey see the previous section, Software and Services Exports.
* The 1997 figures include a number of revisions due to more accurate information becoming available as described in the previous section.
The figures used in the graph above represent goods and services sold to end users, and so do not double-count items which are sold by wholesalers and sold on by retailers.
The Single User Hardware category refers to complete computers intended for use by only one person at any one time and so mainly comprises desktop and laptop PCs and Macintoshes. Multi User Hardware refers to computers intended for use by many people at the same time and includes file servers, midrange systems and mainframes. Parts of computer systems (other than the CPU) when sold separately appear under Peripherals. The split between Software and Computer Services is unreliable because of the difficulty of accounting for software maintenance revenue.
Sales in the New Zealand IT market rose by 13.7% in 1998, compared with a fall of 3.3% in the 1997 financial year, which in turn followed growth of 12.3% in 1996 and 24% in 1995. Increases occurred in all categories but especially in Computer Services (21.6%) and Software (27.8%), in the latter case reversing a 14% decrease in 1997. Statistics New Zealand has attributed Y2K compliance and a shift away from computer hardware selling into computer service sales as contributing to this increased activity.
Combining the IT hardware categories shows that sales of IT hardware in 1998 rose by 6.6% to a total of $1.706 billion. Communications Hardware sales increased substantially (11.7%) following strong growth in each of the previous years. By contrast, sales of Single User Hardware and Peripherals peaked in 1995, with the 1998 rise in sales volumes being insufficient to reverse falls in 1996 and 1997. Similarly, sales of Multi User Hardware in 1998 are below the level of 1996, following a fall in value in 1997. These trends may reflect ongoing and significant decreases in the prices of IT hardware and software, rather than actual decreases in sales volumes.
Sales of Software, Computer Services and Training increased by 15.5% to $1.760 billion in 1998, from $1.524 billion in 1997. This follows an increase of 12.3% in 1996 and a small increase of just 0.5% in 1997. (Note that in the previous report, this was reported as a 0.4% decrease, the difference being due to the revised figures for 1997.) The growth rate of software sales in 1998 more than reverses the decrease of 1997. Computer services sales have continued to increase strongly. By contrast, Training and Education in IT has remained static for the past three years.
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