IBM tops retailers' shopping list

The top 12 tech vendors accounted for almost a third (30.2 per cent) of spending by the retail and wholesale industry last year in Western European.

According to analyst company Manufacturing Insights, the competition to deliver tech to the high street is hotting up and the biggest winner last year was IBM - picking up more than $2.9bn in revenue from the sector.

The analyst said Wincor Nixdorf was top in terms of the percentage of its revenue achieved in the Western European retail and wholesale sector, while SAP and Accenture were the top software vendor and the top IT services vendor in the sector respectively.

Spending on software is expected to grow at around seven per cent and IT services at around 5.2 per cent from 2006 to 2010, with overall tech spending seeing a compound annual growth rate of 4.8 per cent.

This is making retail one of the most attractive vertical markets, the analysts said, with growth opportunities for hardware, software, and IT services companies, which is why a number of vendors are sharpening up their offerings.

Other top vendors for retail include Cisco, Dell, EDS, Fujitsu Siemens, HP, Microsoft, NCR, SAP and T-Systems, according to the analysts.