NLJan2012

Many IT companies disappear each year, they either go out of business, merge or are acquired so the IT & Telecom landscape is in a constant state of change.
When we compare our 2012 database with that of 2002 we can see that 46% of the companies that existed in 2002 are no longer in activity today and yet the volume of partners has not decreased, in fact quite the reverse. In the top three countries alone (DE/FR/UK) more than 31 584 new IT companies have emerged or been identified.
Excluding the period when the internet bubble burst and considering just the period from 2005-2011 we can see the major tendencies in the evolution of IT activities that emerge, and discover which ones lead to the creation of new enterprises and which activities are in decline or remain stable. This observation allows us to define 5 groups of market players by their main activity.

Source compuBase consulting 2012

1. The "effervescent" group: Many company disappearances but also many company creations (see bottom right of graph)
- Consultancies
- IT Infrastructure integrators
- Software solution integrators
- IT service companies
- Telecom companies

2. The "erosion" group: Low rate of company creations/high rate of company disappearances (bottom left)
- Wholesalers

3. The " immobile" group: Low creation/low disappearance rate (upper left)
- Manufacturers
- Software publishers for a specific activity
- Software publishers

4. The "dynamic" group: High rate of company creation/low company disappearance rate (upper right)
- Telecom infrastructure integrators
- Software publishers for a specific process

5. The "market" group: Not too many creations or disappearances (central rectangle)
- Reselling to individuals
- Reselling to businesses

Conclusion: Generally speaking, successive consolidations and mergers are far from drawing the IT & Telecom industry closer. Only a part of the supply market is more concentrated, but the spread of various technologies and the expansion of the market to SMBs and very small businesses show that, on the contrary, distribution players, with the exception of wholesalers, are retaining their numbers through constant renewal, or, as in the case of integrators, are even increasing their population. The winners in the evolution of IT & Telecom activities are those companies with a strong services vocation, with increased stability for telecom integrators and publishers of software for business processes. These developments will compel manufacturers and software publishers, but also wholesalers, to improve their understanding of their partners' business, ie: the origin of their partners’ contribution to their overall cash flow (the rotation of stock or sale of services), so that their sales and communication strategies align with their partners’ real business.

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