IT&C retailers say sales up 30-60% in Q1, telecom industry still ailing

eMAG, Pcfun, Pcgarage and EvoMag, some of the biggest local IT&C retailers, saw sales up 30 to 60% in the first quarter year-on-year, according to the data they made available to ZF.
eMAG, the domestic number one IT&C retailer posted 60% growth of its business to almost 30 million euros, according to Radu Apostolescu, vice-president and development director of the company. He did not provide further details about what made this growth possible.

On the other hand, the IT&C wholesale and retail group controlled by Marius Ghenea posted 30% higher revenues in the first quarter. The results, as Ghenea says, were made possible because of the constant expansion of the product range and online promotion campaigns, amid growing interest in online purchases among customers. Ghenea controls a number of online retailers, such as Pcfun and Pcgarage, while Fit Distribution is also a wholesaler.
IT&C retailer EvoMag, too, posted 58% higher sales in the first quarter.

It is not yet clear, though, whether the sales of the above-mentioned retailers equal overall growth of computer sales. While Acer, the market leader in 2010, announced stagnation in first quarter, HP, which started to also sell some of its lower-cost models in Romania, posted higher sales.
"The market is not recovering as fast as we had expected," said Bogdan Iftemie, Acer's sales manager.

There seems to be a similar feeling as far as the industry of telecom giants Orange, Vodafone, Romtelecom, Cosmote and UPC is concerned, whose first quarter business amounted to almost 800 million euros. Although they will not announce their results any sooner than next month, their cautious comments over the last few months suggest the market is not growing for the time being.